Dear five year old me,
I hope that you know how lucky you are. Well, I know you don't, because you're me, just thirty years ago, and I'm you thirty years in your future. Your life is pretty amazing at the moment: I know, because I lived it. You are too little to appreciate it, but you have a great family and are incredibly loved! You are living in a foreign country and experiencing life like very few people get to.
You were four when you moved there, which is pretty young! Right now, mom is homeschooling you, which I know you're not appreciating, but in the future you will. You'll have faint distant memories of her being with you all the time, sewing, baking, and just being mom. You'll recall tropical rainy season days, saving dying birds, harvesting chickens, chewing buai, and gecko flicking...yes, that is a thing. In a few years you'll go to boarding school, which you'll never forget.
You'll have lots of memories. What's important is what you do with them. Every memory and experience you have there will help to shape who you become in your future. If I could give you some advice it would be this: Play hard, love hard, and dream big. Appreciate everything that you have and hold on to everything that makes you YOU. Don't settle, or lower your expectations, ever. Be the best you can be at everything you do, and do it with kindness, compassion, grace, and intelligence. Listen well to everything and everyone around you, and speak less: find the value in the times when you speak and make your words count. You have a loud voice, which dad will tell you constantly for the next 15 years...just remember that it isn't the volume of your voice, but what you say that makes you heard.
Be true to yourself and love yourself. You are pretty independent and strong-minded. You know who you are, you just have to be comfortable in your own skin. Be smart and don't ever stop reading, learning, or pursuing things that interest you. Do what you love. You are creative and interesting, and funny. Be that person always. Your future is both dark and bright at the same time. I'm not going to say that you won't have struggles or times you feel lost. I would be lying to you. People won't always like you or value you. Just know that living your life according to what other people think is a pretty miserable existence (you end up doing this in your future occasionally). Be yourself and great people will love and appreciate you as you should be.
So much time has passed since I was you, even though it feels like it was yesterday. I look back now and wish I could have locked those memories up so I wouldn't forget them all. You have so much life ahead of you, and so much to learn and experience. I want you to always remember who you are and tell you to never take anything for granted. So go, run barefoot like you always do, play, laugh and enjoy your life. Because no matter what the future holds, life is pretty amazing.
