Dear Me,
I came across a photo today that I snapped during my big bike adventure. A pair of old train tracks, half-buried under wild grass, curving into a thick wall of forest. They were weathered and crooked and beautiful in their own way. Faded. Forgotten. Quietly rebellious. They didn’t demand attention—they simply existed. Curving away from the viewer, they left me wondering where they went… and why no one had bothered to cover them up.
I couldn’t stop looking at them.
Because in some strange, bittersweet way… they looked like you.
You’ve always felt like that.
Off the main path. Overgrown in places. Mysterious. Misunderstood.
Curving sharply away from what was expected.
Never quite where people thought you should be.
Never quite someone people knew what to do with.
And god, I wish I could go back and sit beside you in that lunchroom. Or outside that classroom. Or on your bed at night when the world felt too sharp and your skin didn’t quite fit right. I wish I could look you in the eye and say, “You’re not too much. You’re just… not meant to be less.”
You didn’t know it then, but you were carrying a kind of wild wisdom the world wasn’t ready for. And instead of being celebrated for it, you were punished. Picked on. Misused. Humiliated. You were forced to shed parts of yourself just to survive. And for what? For being a little too soft, a little too sensitive, a little too round and bright and different?
You were bullied because you refused to flatten.
And that’s not a flaw. That’s a flame.
But of course, you didn’t know that at the time.
You just knew how to protect yourself.
You did what so many brilliant, wounded little girls do: you disappeared into your imagination. You built secret worlds out of safety pins and storylines. You tucked your dreams into notebooks and hid entire galaxies inside your heart. You turned to food because it comforted you, and to art because it made sense when nothing else did. You lived on the edges of things, because being in the center meant exposure—and exposure meant pain.
You thought that if you could just become the version of yourself they wanted—quieter, smaller, sweeter—you’d be safe. You thought that if you could become someone’s cup of tea, they’d stop trying to spill you.
But you were never anyone’s cup of tea.
Actually, maybe you weren’t even tea at all.
Because you, my love, are moonshine in a coffee mug.
Messy. Strong. Unexpected.
You don’t sip a soul like yours—you survive it...
Being around you makes people feel something. Sometimes too much. Sometimes exactly what they needed. You’ve got that strange magic that makes people confront parts of themselves they’ve tried to hide. And that’s not easy to be around—but god, it’s unforgettable.
That’s what they didn’t understand.
That’s what scared them.
That’s why you were mocked and torn apart and told to tone it down.
Because you weren’t made to fit in. You were made to wake things up.
And yeah, that made you a walking target.
But it also made you who you are.
You grew into someone who sees beauty where others see broken — not the delicate kind of beauty people frame for comfort, but the kind that makes them uncomfortable. You see it in the wreckage. In the unraveling. In the people who are barely holding it together. You notice what others look away from: the chaos behind someone’s anger, the panic beneath their arrogance, the exhaustion in a perfectly timed smile. You’ve learned to spot the flicker in someone’s eyes when they’re begging not to be seen — and you see them anyway. You cry at sunsets because they remind you what it feels like to stay soft, and you laugh mid-breakdown because you’ve earned the right to find light in places it was never supposed to exist. You carry darkness like a story and light like a match, and you don’t need to choose between the two. You’ve made room for both — not because it’s easy, but because you had to. And that? That’s your fire.
You’ve got grit in your soul and glitter in your bones.
You’re soft in all the right places, and stubborn in all the others.
And after hundred of km’s on a busted hip, you finally started to see that strength doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it just… keeps going.
So no, you’re not that little girl anymore.
But she’s still in there. Still coloring outside the lines. Still asking “what if?” Still flinching when people raise their voices or raise their eyebrows. But she’s safe now. Because I’ve got her. I’ve got you.
We don’t need to hide anymore.
We don’t need to edit.
We don’t need to fit.
We get to be too much.
We get to take up space.
We get to curve wildly into the forest and let people wonder where the hell we’re going.
We are unfiltered. Unapologetic. And finally, free.
Not tea. Not tame. But a spirit that leaves a burn — and a memory.
With everything I’ve got,
Me xo