Grace is what lets you look at your old texts without wanting to move to another country.

Old messages are mortifying because you can see how badly you were trying and how little you knew. The cringe measures distance travelled, which is why it hurts more the further you have come. Mercy toward your past self is not pretending those messages were cool. It is accepting that whoever sent them was doing their best with what they had.

Scroll back somewhere you normally avoid and read a few of them on purpose. Notice that you survived every one of those conversations. Then say something kind about the person who wrote them, since nobody else is going to.