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When you meet yourself in a dream what do you say?
When the child you once were comes to visit you, what do you tell him?
Do you tell him that it’s okay to be who you are?
Do you tell him that people will not love him?
Are you going to save him from some sort of pain?

What do you say when you know exactly what your thinking?
"Whatever comes to go, passes with more anxiety;
leaving wakes and ribbons and streams of love
bringing with it a line of passing, known to those who journey to give away all,
therefore having abundantly."

You know, telling him all the secrets of life will not teach him.
When I met myself in a dream, all I could do was show
myself where the restrooms were.

I think that sometimes the best thing you can say is nothing.
He has to find out the hard way, as I did, or else he wouldn’t be me.

In my dream I cried so hard that my eyes bled,
‘cause there was nothing that I could tell my self.
my oldest sister was there to give me support,
she wanted me to tell him a secret that would
save me from some embarrassment and depression.
She wanted me to tell my young self that being who I am is acceptable.
She wanted me to tell myself that I would have feelings and emotions unlike my friends.
I’d be attracted to things that shamed me,
except they shouldn’t, they are perfectly natural.

I often think about how my life would be different if I’d accepted my sexuality before turning 21; it would have saved me 9 years of internal strife, 5 months of depression,
embarrassing moments and relationship consisting of false love.
But if I was saved from all that, I would have suffered in other ways to get where I am now. How could I appreciate life as I do now, if I hadn’t undergone all this pain.
What if I had told my young self.
What would he have thought of that?
He was only 12,
experiencing things of adolescence very unfamiliar...

I didn’t much like those years,
but perhaps knowing I was gay would give some ease to that transition.
But I can’t
I can’t tell him.