A Letter to my 28-Year-Old Self

Keep going, my love

Dear 28-Year-Old Rahma,

You've been on my mind so much this week. I've been driving with my Spotify ‘Liked’ playlist on shuffle and there are all these tracks that you added, back in the London days. Some of them are great - a welcome throwback - others are not. No wonder they were secret, guilty pleasures. They're pretty bad.

Do you remember that time your Spotify account automatically linked with your Facebook status and, to your utter embarrassment, P saw that you were listening to a Bubblegum Pop Slumber Party playlist on the way home from work? Cringe.

I'm writing to you from nine years in the future. It's 2024, I'm almost 38. There's so much to tell you, and also, so much that I can't yet reveal. It's too soon for you to know.

Everything you are praying for now is already moving towards you. All of it and more. But none of it looks like the image in your head. It's beyond what you can currently imagine.

Perhaps I'm being too cryptic. I know you. You'll be grasping for a concrete fact. I'm married, okay? I’ll tell you that. I'm not going to tell you how long it's been. Though it's important for you know it will happen, it's also essential for you to live as if it will take many years. Don't hang around waiting for it. There is much to do. Seize the opportunities in front of you now. I know you will.

You'll find it terribly un-feminist of me to say, but marriage has solved lots of your problems. It's created endless new ones but I like to think I'm a lot better at navigating the challenging moments in my life than you are.

Perhaps that's unfair. What I mean to say is, thank you, for the courage you are demonstrating now; the international move, the new role, the honesty with yourself, the willingness to try new things. I'm reaping the rewards of all that. My comfort zone is wider, more spacious. I'm deeply grateful for every cringe, every stomach-churn, every blush that you are investing now. The return is great.

So yes, you will get married. You will wait, or be forced to wait, until you are really ready though. Until you can receive love and affection without it turning your stomach. Until he who can offer it generously and courageously crosses your path. These things have their timing.

I once heard you had a reputation as “The Ice Queen” among the guys in Cape Town. There's a truth in that. You do need to soften a little. Your standards are impossibly high. I don't mean to say you should settle, but there is some work to do before you’re able to accept the reality of a flawed human being. You, yourself, are not perfect.

At the same time, it's not all on you. Even the most solidly frozen of ice queens can be melted down by some warm hands and a little patience. Perhaps those men had neither. Perhaps they were a little frozen themselves. I’d say my melting is a constant work in progress, but you know the strangest thing? The more I melt the bigger I feel.

Be kind, Ice Queen, but be clear. To be clear is the greatest kindness you can show to others, and yourself. Have the hard conversations. Practice them. Get comfortable with how awful they feel. Those conversations do not become less frequent, less necessary or less important after you find “The One.” In fact, I’d say the opposite is true. More and more of your life begins to rest on the foundation of those conversations.

I’m not going to answer the children question. If I remember correctly this will be the year that you doubt whether you will ever have children. Come Christmas-time, when the entirety of London leaves to go ‘home’ to family and you’ve no more annual leave, you will enter a tunnel of grief. You will realise you are not entitled to have a child; that it is a privilege, not a right, to be a mother. I need you to go through that tunnel. It will change the way you move forward, the way you see yourself as a woman and the possibilities you consider for your future.

I don’t live in London anymore. I don’t even live in the UK. I’m not in Cape Town either, or anywhere in South Africa. I’m somewhere else. On a clear day, I see majestic snow-capped mountains in the distance. It’s postcard-perfect. When the sun rises they glow pink.

I’m learning a foreign language. Being separated from English was one of the scariest things to ever happen to me. That sounds ridiculous, I know. You’re probably one of the few people that would understand. It’s been four years on and off but I do finally feel I’m getting somewhere. Some stuff happened, on a global scale, a few years back, I won’t get into that now, but it meant I didn’t have much opportunity to interact with the locals. Thankfully that has changed.

I looked in the mirror this afternoon and I looked so grown up. My hair is grey now, I grew it out. I’m wearing grown-up earrings today and a grown-up cardigan and I was sitting in the middle of my grown-up responsibilities. It took me slightly by surprise, to see myself that way, but I liked it. I’m big now.

In a way, you’re about to die. I don’t want to scare you. It’s not a physical death, and it’s not a bad thing, but it might feel like it while you’re in the process. K is going to die this summer, for real, the physical kind. The cracks will start to show in anything in your life that is not true and aligned for you, but then, that allows for those parts of your life to get noticed and tended to until they are.

Until then, go push yourself too hard at a spin class, or something similar that will give you the endorphin rush you need to make it through the day. Pump Sweet Lovin by Sigala to full volume as you head there, in a rush, with your feet pounding on the pavement. It’s one of your tracks that I was glad to rediscover.

On your way, imagine me, with my windows down and my system up, as I hug the curves of these winding country lanes. Imagine me as the grown-up lady I am, screeching at the top of my voice as if I was you, or worse, as if I was us in 1999, at one of those lunch-break millennium countdown parties. Can you picture it?

With all my love,

Current-day Rahma

P.S. This post is 2/24 of the Sparkle on Substack (Free) 24 Essays Club with

Claire Venus

2/24