A Letter to My 18 Year Old Self by Isaac Tommson
Dear Me, You are actually eighteen years old. You think you are useless, numb, silly, poor, dazed. You are stressed out : you think about next year, the next months, next September, the bachelor, your studies, the entrance exam, your practice, your ID, your housing, COVID-19, quarantine, money, scholarships, testosterone, failure. You are not a failure, darling. You are just an undecided diamond. You might think that you didn’t have good enough lessons, good school, good teachers, good education. That you didn’t go to universities open days, to music schools open days last year. But during the last year of high school, you weren’t living, you were just trying to pass the days. You were just trying to not kill yourself. You couldn’t go to open days when you were in a racist, transphobic and biphobic environment, when you were living trauma after trauma, when you hated yourself so much. Do you know another eighteen year old person who lives through racism, who lives transphobia, who is a child of immigration and who is not straight? Do you remember that non-cis youth of colour has the highest risk of kill themselves? Do you realize, darling, that you are a gift? Do you understand that you are a champion? Do you realize that nearly everyone pushed you to death? Do you understand that your situation is so logical according to the system?
48 RFD 182 Summer 2020
I know that you are sometimes upset that you didn’t go to music academy earlier, that you were doubting between music and writing, that your parents never guided you, that you feel left behind. It is normal to feel late in a world that doesn’t care about you. In a society that doesn’t respect you. In a context that forgets you. You see all these young white cis people going to uni, going to art schools, etc. You might envy them, you might have grief about your teenage years, you might hate them. But, they were expected to be there, they were expected to do high-er education. There were so many expectations for them to succeed. Everything was made this way. They never experience racism, they never experience transphobia: it is already so easy. The whole society was built for them. They were always ready. But you are going to be there as well. You are going to succeed too. You are going to study what you want, you are going to practice and to play their game even better than them. You are already a soldier and a strategist: don’t be so hard on yourself. You are the new generation. You will get a bachelor, you will get a master, double masters, masters abroad. You will learn many languages. You will speak English, Dutch, French, Italian, Russian. You are breaking the cycle of poverty and despair that oppressors force you to be trapped in. Just keep going, darling.
