As much as I might want to make this letter sound epic let's face facts, our life has not always been that rosy and gone are the days back in Primary school where we'd lie our hearts out just to make believe.

To be honest with you I was terrified this day would come.
I've been trying my best to avoid ever having this meaningful dialogue with you as it would have been so easy to justify a life that just rolled out unplanned -

But hey 13 year old Tadiwa , we need to talk...

Having lived this confusing stage of your life as the only child with no one but God to reach out to and really inquire about some rather personal stuff like how not to give in to sexual sins... I just thought you should know that daddy remarried and now we got siblings bro!!! I like to see them more as our kids though and I've seen to it that I take this responsibility and play my role as a big brother and sometimes father figure if need be 😌.
These two won't have to cluelessly figure out how teenage life works as unlike us they've got a blubber mouth of a brother who once was a teenager too.

Life is no longer as quiet and lonely as it used to be, it's noisy and sometimes quite stressful too 😩😅🥲

Moving on to the 16 year old you:

Growing up we made an eternal oath to seize every opportunity that comes to us or even stumbles our way and always strive to be the best versions of ourself using Faith as our currency as most of the time you know how the few resources at our disposal didn't seem be able to afford us the plane tickets to our destiny so we'd patiently take tiring long walks or bumpy rides there.

We envisioned ourselves not leaving the world just as we found it but engrave greatness and leave a lasting impact like the vulgar graffiti expressions we used to see inscribed on public toilet walls in the CBD.

I believe we are getting there. We now believe in ourselves more than we did back in the day when we hadn't figured out a lot of things and the story of our life seemed so uncertain.
...