Oh little girl, how much you’ve grown. The enthusiastic and rambunctious individual that you once were has recently been dulled. The actions of life and its societal drivers have tainted the pure white leaves of your delicate exterior. They have attempted to mold you into what they find fitting for you. Meanwhile, threatening your livelihood. It has attempted to force the will out of you – trying to contain any and all ounces of passion from within you. Every characteristic that so acutely and accurately defines your being is a menace to them. Most importantly, your drive to succeed.

Your will has always been viewed as a threat itself. Society labeled you an overachiever, superior, and self-engaged. Your intent of being focused on yourself and your dreams intimidated others. As a result, they persuaded you to control your drive. Instantaneously, you dim the fire that fought so hard to light the way for your future. You wanted to be normal. You want others to not view you so cruelly just because you are different. Therefore, with every ounce of society’s pressure, you pulled the trigger on the fire extinguisher and put out the light that created a home for itself in your heart.

Over time, intellectual interests would ignite a small ember. The light would return – calling you to craft it. But in an effort to appease society, it would once again be silenced. Continuously, internal battles between yourself and your drive were fought, in addition to the external fight of yourself and society. Although, more often than not, the fire put up more of a fight. The climax took place during a seventh-grade science course.

Often, the fire would fight back. Never, would it let you forgo your destiny and hand it over to the society that so willingly tried to force it from you. Seventh grade, that’s when it reawakens inside you. During your first solo heart dissection, the fire from within spoke to you. It controlled your actions, as each cut was precisely made to extract the secrets that the heart possessed. Nothing had ever latched onto you so strongly or echoed your name so clearly. This was the spark the relight the fire within you. This was your everything.

Not many people have ever understood you. No one or anything had ever come so close to knowing you as that fire that formally introduced itself to you in that seventh-grade classroom. Ever since, you have been chasing that intimate connection. Because of this, no bond will ever compare. You distance yourself from the individuals who think that they get you as intimately as the fire from within. However, you know better. Your fate is attached to the ember that society tried to tame. The pureness of your adolescent self is contained within that flame and it’s a feeling that you’ll forever chase. Your eternity is embedded in science and the natural world that surrounds you. In all honesty, the humanities have never ruled in your favor. As a result, the ember echoes your name in connection to the secrets of the internal parts of mankind, the anatomy and physiology behind society.

Please do not ever give into the pressures that surround your external being, because I promise you that the acceptance of the ember that burns internally is much more significant. Your intimate connection with the society that attempts to label you different is the reasoning for their existence, their innerworkings. You understand this more than anyone and one day, you will connect with it so much more. You have a power that I have not witnessed inside many others. Cultivate yourself and the fire that thrives for you to develop it. You are more than the label that society gives you. You are the gift that God and science have given you. Fight for yourself and reclaim your power, you won’t regret it.

Love,

Your elder version, who to this day, still loves science