A letter from Aug 20, 2026

Dear FutureMe, Happy birthday, Z! I hope you are happier today than usual because it's your special day. I used to think that birthdays are not special days because it could be any day, you could have come out earlier or later than that day, but I think I now realize why it is so. It's just fun to think and feel like you have a day of yourself, idk what it is with birthdays really but I'm hoping to learn to enjoy it more every year. Life is not depressing unless you make it to be, saying this feels so hypocritical because I used to be depressed (during my teens) and I always believed that if it weren't for the specific factors in my life, I wouldn’t have become so miserable. My depression was mainly because of my family (like most depressed human beings lol), I just have a very dysfunctional family, so chaotic and miserable, I do not want to even think of helping to fix us because it's really just so hopeless. Every birthday all I could think about is how this wouldn’t have happened if my parents were just a bit responsible, I for sure believe I was born from an unwanted pregnancy, I was literally the reason of why my father couldn't graduate college, and whenever I hear about him and his current family struggling, I always feel this unconscious guilt, because deep inside I feel like this wouldn’t have happened if it weren't for me. What a life for an unwanted eldest child.