I look at the younger me with compassion;
Her hopes lost in her silence,
Without a compass, under the passivity of her patience,
Trying to walk with steps without distance,
To the young heart.
I caress my rookie head with a smile,
With a fresh enthusiasm as if unbroken, untired,
I hug tight.
My old self in front of my eyes, I look at myself with a smile. What an illusion time is. The woman of yesterday is me, and not me at the same time. In each of me, there's a piece familiar, and thousand pieces unfamiliar. Some of them I have let go off my skirts on the way, some of them I sewed tightly so that they wouldn't fall off, I took a long way without noticing that some of them were winking through the frills.
My behavior patterns that I learned without realizing it; my silences, my search for a cure in the despair of patience, my hopes that I thought I grew with 'it's over now'. Then I cling to the joy in my yeast, I am relieved by company, I am reborn with a pair of beautiful eyes, with the green of a sprout. I greet each of them, and look back at those days without getting upset or angry. I stroke the rookie head of the young woman of those times, tenderly hidden in my smile. Just like growing each day compared to the previous one, it is as if our compassion for our previous selves is also growing. While we experience love and being loved in life, perhaps our most precious gift is learning to embrace ourselves.
Meltem Altinkaya
9.7.2021