Dear Kaitlin,
Hi, how are you?
What a wild ride, right?
I remember the first $100 we ever spent. Of all the things in the world we could buy with our money, we bought beauty.
From a young age, you felt like you were never quite as pretty as the other girls. You wanted friends and connection. You were shy. When you did speak, you had a tendency to embellish minor details. You wanted to be impressive. You wanted people to like you.
You escaped a lot in your own head. You still do.
When you were younger, you told stories because you wanted people to think you were interesting.
You thought that if you could make yourself into someone that other people loved, maybe one day you’d love yourself too.
It took you almost thirty years to realize you had it backwards.
The storytelling started early on. It aligns beautifully with your current-day passions.
In sixth-grade math, the teacher passed out $100 to each student. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a real hundred dollars, but the sentiment was the same. We were learning the importance of managing a budget.
Which is absolutely fucking hilarious if you knew what your life would look like as a 30-year-old adult.
You’re grateful every day for a good career. Seriously, you even write it down. Because you love to spend money.
Let’s plead the fifth.
It’s been a long time since sixth grade. Different times, different economy. And even though the money was fake, the goal was to stretch that hundred dollars and create a budget.
After giving the class the money, we were told that we would be bidding on a list of qualities. It was an auction. You had to budget and bid against the other students.
Value. Not only the value of the qualities themselves, but the value of prioritizing the things you wanted to budget for.
In reality, the exercise had a lot of deeper meaning. You never would’ve known it at the time.
Some of the qualities were practical. There were things like having a good job, with the bidding starting at $5. Having a nice house, $10. Maintaining good friendships. Being funny. Love.
The highest bidder would get the quality.
You were about to learn a very important lesson.
You had kept your money through the first few rounds. The bidding had gotten too high, and you didn’t want to lose everything.
Beauty was the next option to bid on. You bid all $100.
Not quietly. Loud and proud, you shouted out $100. You showed everyone in the room just how badly you wanted to be pretty.
How embarrassing.
People picked things like being smart or living a long life. That’s pathetic. She just wants to be pretty?
I don’t know if that’s what the other kids were really thinking. But back then, you would’ve assumed that they all were.
I vividly remember this story. Of course, we couldn’t just play off that classroom disruption. The teacher had to address it.
You don’t remember exactly what she said. I’m sure it was something foundational about the importance of a budget.
See, that’s why you can’t stick to one.
You’re just a girl! You forgot what your teacher had said in sixth grade!
When you started healing, you didn’t realize how incredibly important letters like this would become to us. Getting to reminisce and work through the different chapters of your life through words on a page has been an incredible journey.
It has been a long time since sixth grade.
Now, we’re not even gonna get into the trauma that came during all those middle school and teenage years afterward. There is much to be said about the struggles, the pressures, and the absolute toxicity of navigating puberty.
We were an absolute disaster. I’m sure many people can relate.
One time, you punched your dad. You were a crazy bitch. Adulthood has suited you much better.
Moving forward, I want to talk about what changed when you went to college.
Believe it or not, you were in love with a boy. At 19, it was the first relationship that you were actually enjoying. You thought it was love.
Everyone thinks it’s love at that age. It’s a part of the experience.
I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve left the first time he cheated on you.
I know, I’m sorry.
I remember that day.
You had driven three hours south to his college to visit. He lived in Ames, attending Iowa State. In Minnesota, you were in the biology program at Concordia and had a great job making commission.
You were doing well. I have to wonder sometimes how different your life might have looked if you had pursued that journey.
I’m glad you didn’t. I’m glad we ended up right here. Heartbreak and all.
After a couple of months apart, you were super excited to see your boyfriend. Back home, you had had a pretty close relationship. You trusted him.
There was no reason for you to even think twice when you grabbed his iPad. Scrolling through it, you didn’t realize it was connected to his texts.
You saw them all.
I think he said it was the girl who gave him his campus tour? Like damn, he literally slept with the first girl he met in college.
Our relationship hadn’t even lasted through the first day. Crazy miscommunication on our part.
To say the least, you weren’t expecting all the texts. The photos. He had always been a very visual learner.
It felt even more hurtful when you were lying in the exact same spot as the photo evidence.
The disrespect was at an all-time high, and your self-esteem was at an all-time low. You should’ve left him right then and there.
I wish I could tell you that you stood up for yourself. That you never spoke to him again.
Held your head high and stormed out.
We wouldn’t be here if you had.
It’s okay. I’m glad you didn’t.
Transferring schools two months later had been a big choice. You were super excited about moving. Not just for the man, but to be out of state.
It was exciting. Your first time away from home. A real independent adult.
You even found a sublease at the complex right across the street from your boyfriend. It must’ve been a sign, obviously!
We were meant to be together. He would never hurt you again.
You guys could spend more time together!
Yep, you sure could.
I wish I could tell you that the next two years got easier. That you never caught him again, or again. Or… I lost count of all the times you caught him cheating.
At some point, you stopped caring when he played in your face. It wasn’t a true relationship anymore. It hadn’t been in years. You were two toxic people feeding off one another.
You both shared bad habits but had different vices.
But that’s not to say it didn’t have an effect on your self-worth. Cheating is a really hard thing to reflect on. Measuring your self-worth and feeling like you weren’t enough can be detrimental to the ego.
It sucked.
This is not to place blame on anyone else. You acted self-destructively, absolutely, yes.
However, you were really sad. And you took really poor care of yourself.
You were sick, in a lot of ways.
Mentally, physically, and emotionally, you had spiraled out of control. It wasn’t surprising.
I’m really proud of you for pushing through.
You did it, regardless.
When you graduated in December of 2018, your reflection in the mirror had become unrecognizable. In every way.
The girl who had left Minnesota for college no longer existed.
I think you were lost for a while.
But you kept going.
That’s crazy.
When you moved home and took your first job out of college, some distance from the memories and some new focuses were a much-needed breather.
I wish I could tell you that you never let your college boyfriend disrespect you again.
But I’m no longer a liar.
Stand up, girl. Damn.
At least after you bought your first house, he was disrespecting you under your own roof.
Yup! You owned your own home. At 24!
Not many people get to say that.
You kept going. All of that learning and growing that you did in college? It hadn’t stopped you from building a life for yourself.
At this point in the story, you were really struggling to figure out your life path. You had gone through all these changes. You had graduated and had a stable job. Bought a house.
You were looking for your next step.
What I find so comforting throughout your journey is that you’ve always loved taking photos. And you took a lot of them.
It’s like a perfect photo diary in some places. Many recurring furry faces.
Yup.
You may have lost a man through college, but you gained four animals. So, who’s the real winner here?
You are.
Being a lover of photography, I’ve gotten to walk through our history in photos. It’s been incredibly healing to see these pieces of our story.
I want to make a particular comment about this time frame in our life.
Although you took many photos of your pets, your family, your friends, and your new house, you had disappeared from your own frames.
Truly, it’s like you don’t exist.
Remember that reflection you hadn’t recognized after college? You didn’t particularly like it. And your self-worth was still pretty low.
Getting your photo taken felt like a threat. You avoided it at all costs.
When a photo was taken, you always had to edit it before it could ever get posted.
I wish I could tell you then what I know now. That this period was tough.
In 2021, when you start to appear in photos again, you’re standing next to someone new. You had found your worth in someone else, once again.
I think you fell in love with the first person who had shown you any true affection in years. It wasn’t his fault you weren’t right for one another. He was a good guy.
This story isn’t to place blame on him either. You learned so much through the experience.
I wish I could tell you that this was where you got better. That you learned you could never love anyone else until you had loved yourself.
You thought this relationship was it for a really long time. You bought a house together, had a ring picked out, and were going to plan a wedding.
When he changed his mind without any notice, it really hurt you. It had destroyed your entire world, actually.
You were so sure this time. You thought you had been enough.
You thought you were broken.
I’m sorry for what you went through. How low you had felt. How lost you had become.
Your healing journey started with managing the drinking problem that you had developed in college. It’s easy to see now that you sometimes do things in excess.
You don’t need to drink wine by the bottle. Who knew?
I’m glad we went through that period. It was important.
Without all these moments that you thought were your absolute lowest, we wouldn’t be here reflecting on just how far we have come.
This journey inspired this entire journal. All of these small memories, when you had chosen to put your time, energy, and love into everything and anything but yourself. These times had fundamentally changed you as a person.
You hit rock bottom and chose to build a really beautiful life despite it.
Not everyone can relate to the struggles of never loving yourself. I do.
Some people may relate to struggling with mental illness. I did.
I believe that many people know what it feels like to wake up every day and not show any love to the person they see in the mirror.
I’ve been there.
It’s really hard stuff.
I’m sorry. I promise, there were so many reasons you went through everything that you did.
You worked really hard to build the life that you love now.
Up until this point in the story, you had never put any love into yourself. From a very young age, you had found your self-worth in what others thought about you.
If they thought you were beautiful, if they thought you were funny. If they wanted to be your friend, if they liked you.
Somewhere along the journey, you had determined that it was more important for other people to like you than for you to like yourself.
That’s a really toxic pattern to get into. Trying to please others was a hard habit to break.
But I watched you find all your individual pieces all over again.
You know what I love most about you now?
You look at the moon.
You follow it obsessively, actually. You talk to her all the time.
You stop what you’re doing to appreciate a beautiful sunset. You take the long way home because the sky looks particularly pretty.
You find reasons to fall in love with the world around you, even when there’s nobody beside you to share it with.
You enjoy a walk every single day. Usually multiple! You care about what you put in your body and what it does to your mental health. Good food makes for a really good mind.
You find new ways to challenge yourself every single day.
You hike mountains now. Real ones! All the time, and you actually love it.
Reading, writing, and learning have actually saved your life. You know how to express yourself now.
You’re back in school.
Crazy, right?
The girl who barely graduated college and still has nightmares about late exams. You’re back in school, by choice.
You’re studying for the LSAT.
It’s wild. You’re actually retaining things.
You’re social.
The connection you desperately looked for with other women, you find easily now.
You learned that you could make real friends, exactly as you are. You didn’t need to embellish your stories. And people would genuinely like you for them regardless.
You started showing up to events, all on your own. The person who used to consider herself shy shows up alone and actually enjoys herself. A solo date.
It’s romantic.
You’ve built connections and a schedule.
You’ve used those connections to build a brand. To build a platform.
You gather all the fun things that you are doing in your own life and have made it easy to share with others. Connecting them with their communities, their bodies, and their minds.
Things that had helped you when you really needed them.
You wrote code. Built an entire website, all by yourself.
It’s pretty cool. You’re basically a software engineer, right?
Close enough.
After many years of trying to play a part and wanting to be someone else because you didn’t love the girl in the mirror, you realized that you were so beautiful in all of your own unique ways.
What used to seem broken had never needed to be fixed.
The parts of yourself that you had tried to hide had been your biggest strengths. It took you a while to learn that.
But I’m glad you did.
Falling in love with yourself and your life was the best thing that had ever happened to you.
Somewhere along the way, you realized that you were always deserving of an incredibly beautiful life.
And I believe that is healing.
Nobody’s perfect, and this is not me promising that you are either. But you’ve come a long way.
Especially with your self-worth.
You put time, energy, and love into yourself every single day. And yes, it might not be perfect, but it’s much better than where you started.
And you’re only ever getting better.
For a long time, you looked for validation in other people. It’s sad to remember how much you allowed their actions to hurt you, but you wear those scars beautifully now.
You never needed to auction off your hundred dollars. You were always a really beautiful person.
Instead of pouring love into men who did not have a lot of respect for you, you pour that love into respecting yourself.
Exploring your spirituality and connection to the world. Getting up and moving your body every single day. Learning to slow down and enjoy even the quiet, simple moments.
There are so many individual habits and hobbies you’ve picked up that make your story precious.
Romanticizing life has turned out to be just as important as romanticizing any relationship.
More so as you’ve gone through your healing journey.
Your stories and your writing might not one day change anybody else’s life. But I know you’ve grown regardless.
You used to tell stories because you wanted people to like you. Now you tell stories because you finally like yourself.
If no one else ever reads your writing, not these letters, the essays, or your novel, it won’t change how you see yourself.
If, in the worst case, they do read your work and they hate it, they comment on it, they talk about it.
It will be okay. It won’t change how you see yourself.
I know this because I have seen you pull through the days you thought were your absolute darkest. I’ve seen every one of the wounds that caused your scars.
I’m happy to report that your self-worth is no longer tied to what anyone else thinks of you. That has been a wonderful step in all of your progress.
I can’t wait to see what you keep building.
And for the record, if you had $100 today, you wouldn’t spend it on people thinking you’re beautiful.
You’d spend it on shoes.
All my love,
Kaitlin
