Past me,
You think you’ll always be this way, and to some extent you’re right. What you haven’t seen yet though is that “this” isn’t all you are. You aren’t your mental health problems. One day you’re going to realize that you live your life, and your illness forms a part of the background noise rather than it controlling every aspect of who you are.

Your life is about to change more than you can imagine now, and you are going to be the one responsible for that. You have everything you need inside of you right now and you ARE going to achieve things you can’t believe. You’ve got to decide you want it though. You can’t sit around saying you’ll never do anything because you’re depressed or you’re ill because then you won’t do it. You can and will do all the things you want to, but it’s all down to you. I know it’s scary, but the best things in life are. You got this.

Dear future me,
I don’t know what to say to you because I don’t know who you are. I think you’ve probably changed quite a bit and I hope it’s for the better. I guess I just hope that you’re happy, that you’ve overcome the things which hold you back and I hope you can see yourself with clearer eyes than I do now.

Dear Dad,
Moving out of home was the best thing I ever did, wasn’t it? When I look back on my teenage years it makes me really sad that we hated each other so intensely because I can see now that in your own backwards way you really did (and do) love me. We lost so much time because we were so busy ignoring each other or yelling at each other and that’s a real shame.

I’m glad we get on now. I’m happy you felt able to not only give me away in my wedding day but to also write and read a speech which saw the entire room fight back tears. I’ve only ever seen you cry once before and that was when the dog died. I think the moment I realized just how much you do love me was just before we left for the church that day. You helped me up in to the pony trap and the driver asked if we were ready to go get me married. You looked at me and said “are you happy and are you doing the right thing for you? Don’t do it if it feels wrong.” I said yes, I was sure and you said that my happiness was ask that mattered and gave the driver a nod and off we went.

So thank you. Thank you for loving me despite everything we’ve been through.

Dear new baby,
I think what amazes me the most about you is that you can do or be anything. You could be a future prime minister or a famous singer. You could excel in music or you could write an entire book. Maybe you’ll run your own business or manage a team of people. There’s so much out there for you if you want it.

But, being happy is more important than any of that. People will try and tell you that it’s really important you do well at school, that you go to uni, that you break your neck to do better than your best. Those people know nothing about real life. If education and pressure make you happy then that’s fantastic, you do that, but if it’s not for you then don’t waste your energy worrying about it because there’s so much more out there for you.

All I want for you is to be happy. If that means you wear clothes I don’t like or listen to music I don’t understand, or if it means you fall in love with someone the same sex as you, or you want to cover your body in tattoos then that’s fine. Never do anything to please someone else because there is only one person who will be with you for your entire life and that’s yourself. You need to make sure you are happy with your life and if you’re not you have every capability of changing it.

Your mountain is waiting..

Dear person I hate,
The problem with hate I’d rather it requires you to care. If you don’t care about during you don’t feel anything. Hate use a lot of passion and energy. I think the reason I hate you is because I care so much about you. It infuriates me that you repeatedly hit the self destruct button even after all these years. You have an incredible support network and a beautiful daughter and all you are doing is setting her up to follow you down this same path.
You’re very good at playing the victim, at using guilt to get people to stay and that makes me feel trapped. Feeling trapped leads to resentment and eventually the person backs away. You can’t accept my reasons though, you keep saying friendship is unconditional but you are so wrong about that. Friendship should be healthy and if it’s not then the beauty of it is that you can and should walk away.
You say you want to support me but what you mean is you want to use me as a distraction from your ocd and maybe that was ok 5 years ago but I’m married and pregnant now and it’s no longer acceptable
I’m sorry our friendship has turned so shot, but right now I truly hate you and don’t want to see you, or speak to you.

*anyone*
Dear J,
You’re lucky that you are a genuinely lovely person because you are so spoiled that if you weren’t you would be incredibly unpopular. You really to me like I’m the same as you and I’m not. You say I’ll be found on maternity leave because you were, but your husband has a very good job while mine is a farm labourer. You say I don’t have a bump yet - it’s only bloating, but you’ve based that on your first pregnancy where you didn’t show until 20 weeks but you are 4 inches taller than me and you have a higher BMI and you know what? Thinking this is a bump is the only thing stopping me from going insane. You smile knowingly when I say I’m worried about my next scan and say “I was like you first time round” and then you phone the midwife because you have a twinge in your stomach despite everyone telling you it’s growing pains. You praise me for eating a packet of crisps and then go on about how healthy your food is, and you claim to understand about my ed thoughts and feelings.
Like I said, you are so lucky your such a nice person, because I could easily dislike you if you weren’t.