Dear Future Me

One thing that I love a lot is poetry, especially poetry that I can relate to as a first generation Canadian Sikh woman. Growing up you really don’t have that many people who you relate to culturally or spiritually in the spotlight or in books. I never knew that there was a part of me that really longed for the ability to connect with people like me, to connect with their art. 

Reading has been something that I have treasured in my life. On my worst days, a book was what took me away from my problems and my loneliness. I devoured books with a hunger when I was young, because it was what I needed then. I grew up in a time when representation wasn’t really that great. Better than the years before for sure, but not like now. In the shows I watched, the books I read, no one looked like me, or had problems like me. I read more than a thousand books in young adult and children’s fiction that I couldn’t even relate to. like, I’m sorry that your 12 year old self has a crush on the school heartthrob soccer player who is dating someone else? What 12 year old relates to that, let alone a 12 year old Punjabi girl who technically isn’t even allowed to think about ‘romance’. Or maybe all of the stuff about how 12 year olds were allowed to go to malls and places by themselves. Like where does that happen, because it certainly did not happen with me. I didn’t start going anywhere by myself until I was in grade 10 and only if I was walking my dog. Basically, I never read a book about someone who was like me, who had to follow the same cultural rules as me. 

It can get tiring, constantly reading about experience you know don’t hold up in your own life. It wasn’t until grade 10ish that I actually was able to find literature that had proper representation that I related to. 

I started reading Jasmin Kaur’s poetry.  I just really wanted to find a piece of art that I could connect to. I had a lot of feelings at that time in my life (still do) about things going in the world, specifically with my Sikh faith and its followers. 

I literally went on google images and searched up Sikh Kaur poems and quotes and that is where I found my eyes opening. Out of all of the amazing WOC Sikh poets, there is just something about Jasmin Kaur’s poetry that just sticks to me so much. Whether it’s her poems about Sikhi, and women in Sikhi or the genocide of 1984, or about struggling with anxiety, I feel like there is finally someone who sees me. Someone who looks like me who goes through the same struggles as me, and who can put it into words better than I ever could. 

I personally think that during this weird and stressful time of uncertainty, the best thing we can do to distract ourselves is find new art and share it. I hope some of you check her work out and enjoy it as much as I do. 

Stay safe and stay home if you’re able to!

Love,

“Look, I don’t know how to be fine

The last time I felt fine was a long time ago

I don’t even remember the feeling of being fine

It’s hard when all you can feel is a dark cloud around your brain

The last time I felt anything other than hopeless is so far back in my memory that I’ve forgotten it

The therapist says I have anxiety

So how I feel when I feel nothing but the end of the world is happening has a name

i feel like I’m stuck in a downward spiral slowly self destructing

Ruining all the good parts of me

Ruining all the things that made me proud of me

Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to feel anymore

Being numb is better than whatever it is I feel

Sometimes I look back on all the times I should’ve been happy

I was never happy

Worrying myself to sickness has become normal

I don’t remember how I felt before this

that’s a lie

I remember when I close my eyes and feel the sun

When I was a little girl and I could be anything

When the books I read made me feel like I had lived a million lives and ruled a thousand kingdoms

I want to go back to that feeling

That feeling of wonder and hope and peace

I don’t know how

I don’t know how not to hurt myself with who I’ve become

I don’t know how to go back to the person I was

Instead I sit here writing things no one will ever see

Feeling things I don’t know how to share

I wish I could go back but I can’t

I don’t know if I have the strength to go forward.

There’s a mess in my mind and I’m the only one that can clean it

Where do I even start

I don’t know

I don’t know anything more than worry, guilt and disappointment

How do I get past this

all I do is hide behind my face

Say words that mean absolutely nothing

I don’t have the will, the strength

I don’t have the hope

i don’t believe in me

I always give up

And now it feels to late

I guess that’s why I don’t try

I don’t want to be this person

I don’t want to give up

But I lose every time

So why try

I’ll just lose again

That’s all I’m good at anyways.”

As people die

And headlines print

Is that humanity never learns

From mistakes

Centuries old

Or just a month ago