A letter from Apr 27, 2023

Dear FutureMe, you have a lot of letters slated for today! oh goodness!! we are 18 now. you are 20. i have a better sense of the kind of person i think i'll be at 20 than i did in high school. that felt so alien then. you seem so young to me now. i am really proud of you for being here. i don't know what has happened in the time between you and i. it might have been difficult. it might not have been. regardless, previous iterations of me did not at all think that you would be here. but you are. and we are all so so proud of you. and i am so proud of you. i love you with my whole heart. i love you so so much. i hope you are keeping yourself healthy. i hope you continue to remember that you did not come here because of berkeley's prowess in evaluating its students. you did not come here to be graded. you came here to learn because you enjoy learning. i hope you are learning for the sake of learning. i hope we still feel that it is a gift to be here, because it is. i hope you are being kind to other people. i hope you are being kind to yourself. you're going to make mistakes. goodness is not some sort of inherent quality that you were born with, it is cultivated. part of that cultivation is making mistakes and learning and growing. part of that is just the recognition of wrongdoing. you don't need to beat yourself up. you are doing just fine. as of right now, i am procrastinating reading about salicylic acid. did we end up double majoring? i won't decide until i've taken more classes and decided what really appeals to me, but regardless, i know you're doing biology! and i love it! and i'm so proud of you for doing something that we've always wanted to do! little cathy would be so proud of the person you are today. please do write back. i want to know how you are doing. i'm sure you have a lot of advice for me. i am doing my best right now. i'm working on being more respectful of maya's feelings today. that's really hard for me to write because i don't think you'll still be together when you receive this and i'm sure you have a lot of regrets about how it ended. i really am trying to do it with grace. i don't mean to be mean. i'm trying to be a good girlfriend, and sometimes i do it wrong. i'm sorry if that causes you guilt today. we are trying. and i know that i can be mean and i can pull away and i'm aware of that and i'm really really trying. anyways, i'm so excited to meet you. i'm so excited to see what you're doing. i'm so excited to hear about everything that's happened. i love you so so much. best, cathy