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Letter to my 15ish year old self

Dear Kelly,

Hey girl.  So I noticed that you were going through some shit.  Like, seriously angsty shit.  And I totally get that some of it is legit.

It’s not fun to get beaten up by your brother like you do.  It’s even worse when people laugh at your problem and tell you that all siblings fight and that you are being super over dramatic.  It’s even more worse when they do that behind your back and you hear about it after they told you how much they believe you and want to help you out of your situation.  It sucks.

On this one, I can’t say that it won’t be a hard road ahead.  It’s going to take years of therapy as an adult and a serious case of PTSD and let’s face it, a bunch of different meds until you find the right one…but you will survive.  You will not only survive, but you will eventually rise above it and be able to tolerate your brother in small doses.  He was going through a lot of shit too and you just happened to be the nearest punching bag…literally.  Your fears that he is going to grow up to beat his future wife are unfounded, thankfully.  He has found a balance.

On that note, that cutting thing that you are doing to fill the void?  Knock it off.  It feels like the right thing to do and I know that you just want to “feel the pain” to make it go away, but seriously.  Knock it the fuck off.  Later in life, you are going to wish that you don’t have so many scars.  Because guuurrrrlll, we are going to have stretch marks and the two together are just not pretty.

Okay, now that the hard stuff is out of the way, you will find love.  It will NOT be with any of the guys you had one sided crushes on in high school, but you will.  I know it is painful to think that ***** and ***** will never know you exist, let alone be your first kiss, but I promise you that there are much better men out there and you will meet “the one”.  Also, stop basing your importance in life on the fact that you have to have a man and be in love.  If you can just let go of that, you can do amazing things.  Realize that your self worth is not based on the fact that you are loved by a member of the opposite sex.  You are having Daddy issues and that is a whole other blog…  😉

Also, don’t fall for the first guy that is cute and winks in your direction.  You may feel like no guy will ever go for you and you better jump on that train before it speeds away, but that is so not true.  You want to go with your heart and flip head over heels, but take a step back and look at it reasonably.  (PS: I know that you will never do this because when you are a teen, there is no taking a step back and looking at it reasonably, at the prospect of love – especially first love)  If you could do this, you might save yourself a few months of heartache.

Your friends are not always your friends and that is okay.  High school is a fucking cesspool of human emotions and hormones.  Every single person there is learning to try and be their own person while wanting desperately to be accepted, just like you.  Here’s the thing, the acceptance part doesn’t mean shit.  It feels like it does at your age…very much.  It feels like your world is going to end when your “friends” decide they no longer like you for whatever reason and leave you sitting alone in the dark.  It’s okay to feel that, because it does indeed suck ass.  However, you cannot control how or why they came to that decision.  I can almost guarantee you that it was influenced by something someone that they admired said and it caused this sort of ripple effect.  Whether or not they agreed with that person, they didn’t want to be the person that they would insult next and cause their own social problem, so they played along.  It sucks.  It is inevitable.  Children are childish.

This next one goes along the same vein…Fuck their judgements.  Like seriously.  What you love today and tomorrow is going to have absolutely no bearing on your friends or foes lives in the future, so fuck ’em.  Love that band that everyone hates.  Enjoy writing stories, songs or poems that other people think are stupid.  Dance when everyone is snickering.  ENJOY YOUR LIFE.  It is not for other people to dictate to you how to live your life.  This will be the hardest lesson to learn and more than likely, you won’t even realize it until you are well into adulthood.  I’m sad about that, because I think about all the years of creativity wasted.

Peer pressure is dumb.  When your friends tells you that they would feel much more comfortable with you if you just took a drag off their cigarette(and this is totally going to happen to you), stick to your guns and say no.  You won’t want to do it, but you will feel pressured into it and that will in turn break that seal that you had on the fear of smoking/drinking/whatever.  A fear of smoking is a healthy thing.  Once you take that drag you will no longer care about how it might affect you.  You already did it and you are still alive!  So now it’s not biggie and you will try to bum smokes from friends.  You aren’t addicted yet, but dang…aren’t I cool because all my friends smoke and now I do too.  You will soon become handcuffed to a very unhealthy and expensive habit.

And, take it easy on your mom.  She is also going through her own personal hell right now and on top of that she is responsible for two lives other than her own.  She is doing the best she can and that is all she can do.  You asking for things you don’t need and cannot afford are not helping.  She feels guilty and responsible for the fact that your dad isn’t around and you are fucked up by it.  She will go out of her way to get you that coveted item you think you need, even if it means going in to debt.  You don’t understand that now, or maybe you do and don’t care.  She just wants you to be happy, but she also doesn’t want you to follow in her footsteps in the bad decisions that she has made.  She worries constantly about how you are going to turn out because she is working 60 hours a week to support you and cannot be there as much as she likes.  So please, lighten up on her.  You and your brother are pretty much all that she has right now and you are both being dicks.

I realize this is all very well for my 43 year old self to tell you.  I’ve lived it.  But in the end, I know that you are stubborn and you want to make your own mistakes.  I can’t stop you from doing that.  I can only caution you and hope you heed my warnings.  Knowing myself like I do, I’m sure you won’t.  Everything is a learning process, and I wouldn’t be the person that I am if I didn’t go through all the angst of my teenage/early 20’s years.

But seriously, don’t start smoking!

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About Me

 

I am a 40 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy knitting and crocheting, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.

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