If I had a time machine, I don’t think I’d use it to change anything.
That’s probably not the answer people expect.
There are certainly moments I’d be tempted to revisit.
Doors I’d want to close sooner.
People I’d want to warn myself about.
Decisions I’d reconsider.
Days I’d desperately want to spare myself from living through.
But changing one moment changes everything that came after it, and I don’t know which thread I’d be willing to pull.
So if the rules allowed me only one message, I’d leave the timeline alone.
I’d find her instead.
Not one particular age.
Every version of her who believed she needed to be stronger than she felt.
Every version who questioned her own instincts.
Every version who thought loving someone meant understanding everything they did.
Every version who mistook surviving something for being okay with it.
I’d sit beside her for just long enough to say:
Stay on your own side.
You don’t have to understand what’s happening yet.
You don’t have to make it make sense.
You don’t have to turn pain into a lesson while you’re still standing in the middle of it.
And you certainly don’t have to abandon yourself just because someone else has.
Trust the discomfort you keep explaining away.
Say no without building a courtroom case for why you’re allowed to.
Leave when staying requires you to disappear.
Rest before your body has to beg you for it.
Ask for help before you’ve proven you can do everything alone.
And when something hurts, let yourself call it hurt.
You will spend enough years learning how to extend compassion to everyone else.
Save some for yourself.
There are things ahead I wouldn’t tell you about.
Some are beautiful.
Some aren’t.
That’s the trouble with time machines, I suppose.
Knowing the future might save us from certain pain.
But it might also steal the wonder of discovering who meets us there.
So I wouldn’t give you a map.
I wouldn’t tell you how the story ends.
I’d only leave you with something I wish you’d known much sooner:
You are allowed to be someone you can count on, too.
Stay on your own side.
I’ll meet you here someday.
One Quiet Question
If you could sit beside an earlier version of yourself for just one minute, what would you want them to know?