To Lles2K13

I know, I know. You're doing it wrong, Lles2K14, you're supposed to write a letter to your future self.

I have nothing to say to the Lles of the future. Her hands aren't numb from the wrist down, she's relaxing in some faraway coffee shop where the cheerful barista has finally remembered to add an extra packet of honey to go with her Earl Grey. Lles2K15 is a regular at the corner cafe. Her phone connects to the wifi automatically. The man behind the counter understands she will stay at least four hours and he has taken to reserving the quiet table for her. Lles' hands are warm. Lles 2K15 is busy compiling notes for her thesis. The cafe is quiet but for a playlist of songs she's heard so often the music disappears into memory. 

You see? Lles 2K13 is in a darker place. Don't you remember?

So hello. I'm here. This time last year, Lles, you were more than half-way through a semester of undergraduate classes, a requirement you were secretly thrilled to fulfill. 

Every time you stepped off the jeepney and trudged up a flight of steps to the classroom, you fantasized about retracing the steps with a clipboard under one arm. Last August, your first classroom on your first day of class happened to be the room where your first graduate class met. The universe. Parallels and plotting. 

You use the tote bag Kim gave you a year ago. You use it for class everyday. The small room you've been given is a cell murky with dust and grime and you must inhabit it four times a week.

This is the latest in a long parade of mistakes.

That's not how you're supposed to feel.

You're supposed to feel excited that your plans are working, that you are part of an institution greater than yourself. You are understandably overwhelmed. It is cool in the shadow of some large, lumbering giant.

I should've written you several months ago.

Your notebook contains the phrase "take it one day at a time" repeated several times, under several dates. You feel guiltiest about this notebook. It travels with you everywhere, even when you go somewhere there is no possibility of light to write by and no scrap of time to scrape words together. You keep writing "take it one day at a time" because your vision has tunneled and the horizon has disappeared. You see nothing but the procession of days, straight and similarly clad in their uniform solidity. They are coming. You write "take it one day at a time" and account for the hours that must arrive in an orderly fashion. Number your days, marshal the hours at your disposal and be responsible.

Although I understand you will not understand the engulfing panic. You are watching this, after all, from some solitary peak.

I must be here to endure the tide.

You also write, "I want to understand this fear." Like it is some nebulous thing outside of yourself, some other alien thing that your body neither owned nor produced. The bile rises to my throat. You will write "I want to understand this fear" in the belief that knowledge will reveal your fears to be baseless. So you read Status Anxiety (Alain de Botton) and remind yourself that your actions are inconsequential in the history of all things, in the history of the universe that must be the only history we believe. There is nothing to fear, you can do nothing of consequence. There is no tragedy that engulfs the universe, there is no tragedy great enough that it must outlive those who suffer it. You also write "I want to understand this fear" because there is no other action available to you.

You are a fear-making, fear-consuming machine.