(Disclaimer: This is going to be pretty long, so I’m going to list the section names and you can either read through the whole thing, or simply look under the sections that you want to read about.)
I’m at risk of sounding too cliché (and possibly boring) with this nonfiction, opinionated letter to my younger self, but I’ve been dying to write this for a while now because it’s cathartic/therapy for me to review everything I’ve learned growing up and to remind myself of the positives in every situation I’ve been in.
So, I’m going to try this out as somewhat of an introduction to my nonfiction. And even though I wrote this mostly for me, I’m uploading it to my blog because I thought that it may help someone else who currently feels the way I feel/felt – either to let them know that they aren’t alone and/or to help them realize that it gets better. So, without further ado…
Dear Eleven-Year-Old Me,
I hate to spoil the surprise for you… but your life is going to go in a completely different direction than you think it’s going to. You will eventually learn that your future will fall into place one way or another, but you won’t believe it until your college years.
So, naturally, things are going to get really difficult. It will be a whirlwind of happiness, love, excitement, exhaustion, anger, frustration, depression, and stress – and you won’t always deal with any of it well.
Now this isn’t necessarily bad news – its just life. At least that’s what you’re going to be told, and I know that if there is one thing you despise – it’s change. You find comfort in scheduling, plans, and routines, but as an adult, one of the first things you’re told is that deviating from the original plan and changing as a person is normal and okay.
Here’s the six things we’ve learned along the way:
- You’re Privileged, But That Doesn’t Erase Your Problems.
- Your Perspective Is Justified.
- Accept Yourself As A Unique, Clique-Jumping, Fighter (School, Softball, Trust, Protection). (This section will be the longest).
- Taking Breaks and Letting Yourself Love Are Important.
- Letting Go Can Heal And Open Doors To New Beginnings (Pink&Fluffy, The Second Boyfriend, Softball, School).
- Family Isn’t Always Through Blood.
- You’re Privileged, But That Doesn’t Erase Your Problems.
You have every opportunity in front of you and you’ve always known this. You know that you’re lucky. You’re a white, blonde, only child with middle-class parents. You won’t have to get a job until you’re nineteen, you won’t have to grow up too fast, and you’re allowed to be a kid.
First of all, remember that you’ll always have a lot to be thankful for.
Yes, you have privileges that you take for granted a lot because you don’t know any different right now – you subconsciously think that everyone lives the exact same way you do because you don’t know any different. And despite everything that the adults in your life have done for you, sometimes they like to hold the fact that they’ve done everything for you over your head when you complain. But don’t let this make you feel like a horrible person who doesn’t deserve any of it.
Please understand that you’re allowed to complain.
You’re allowed to be upset about the things in your life that are upsetting. Some people may think that it’s okay to put you in your place when you start self-pitying because you’ve always had everything handed right to you.
You’re going to have ups and downs, just like everyone else. And you’re not imagining the ups to be small hills and the downs to be canyons like they will eventually be in the near future.
So, please remember when the time comes that you’re allowed to feel and to worry like every other person – it’s normal. I cannot overemphasize this enough.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have the right to feel the way that you do.
You should never feel shame for having the luxury of a good childhood – it doesn’t automatically strip you of the ability to complain or feel depressed about anything ever again.
You are not a spoiled, selfish, ungrateful brat like some may call you. You are not a weak crybaby. You are not a preppy worrywart.
You are a human being who is entitled to your feelings, if nothing else. People may think that you feel entitled to more than that, but I know that all you want at this age is to have friends, feel accepted, and be happy. Your privileges don’t automatically erase all of your problems.
And stop listening to anyone who’s telling you otherwise – trust me, it takes a while to stop believing after absorbing it so many times.
- Your Perspective Is Justified.
You’ll have good and bad times, just like everyone else – but you’ll always overanalyze and dwell on the bad ones so much that the good ones become insignificant. As a result, your perspective on the world will be too negative, and you’ll be called a downer and a pessimist who needs to try and lighten up.
This is probably the most important point I can make to you, right at the beginning: You shouldn’t feel ashamed of the way that your brain works.
While it is a healthy choice to make a conscious effort to think more positively and to vamp up your “dull, depressing” personality to make you appear more likeable – you’ll find it to be extremely difficult to accomplish when so much hatred and anger surrounds you – whether that is within your own family, or the world in general.
On that note, you want to change, because naturally you want people to like you. Therefore, you’ll be told that you need to be more openly fun in order to make more friends and appear attractive to boys. You’ll be told to stop looking so depressed (even though that’s just the way your face looks) everywhere you go because it’s attracting the wrong people and it’s pushing the good ones away. You’ll also be told that you shouldn’t get into any kind of fight because that’s the “lady-like” thing to do. You’ll be told to avoid conflict as much as possible – in one ear and out the other.
As a result, you’ll end up feeling exhausted for trying so hard to always be this upbeat, outgoing, push-over person 24/7 in order to get people to like you. You’ll eventually realize that this won’t get you anywhere, and you’ll feel like a failure. This is mostly where your hatred for yourself begins.
But you won’t realize for a long time that once you surround yourself with the right people… they will love you exactly for who you are, and you won’t feel that need to be someone you’re not anymore.
You are currently being molded into something that you’re just not, and while you should try not to let everything drag you down, you don’t need to change who you are as a person in order to receive love – so PLEASE do us both a favor and stop that.
You are quiet, introverted, empathetic, caring, loving, and an overall nice person. You don’t need to change.
Despite all of this worry and frustration that you will feel over who you are and who you want to be, please remember that underneath it all: you’re normal.
So, the best thing that you can do for yourself right now is focus less on the fact that you feel like a failure for not having as many friends as you think you should, and focus more on accepting yourself for who you are.
- Accept Yourself As A Unique, Clique-Jumping Fighter.
I want to put this issue to bed for you starting right now because you will end up agonizing for years over the fact that you don’t know who you are. You will agonize over not having a label growing up. I can honestly tell you that as an adult, labels are not as nearly important to me as they are to you right now, but you’ve always wanted to know your label(s) – so here are three for you:
a. You are a clique-jumper.
You’re not popular, a girly-girl, a tomboy, a goth, an emo, a jock, a geek, a theatre kid, a bando, or an outcast – you’ve always been in a little of all of them, which doesn’t sit well with you because you want to at least fit in fully with the outcasts.
Truth is, you’re going to have best friends who are social butterflies, involved in music, theatre, and art – but you’ll also have best friends who are interested in science and history, draw anime, wear little makeup, and play video games.
In short, you’ll hang out with girly-girls and tomboys.
You date & befriend kids in the band, but you don’t play an instrument.
You also spend most of your time around jocks because you become a competitive softball player, but your personality doesn’t coincide with the other girls.
You work extremely hard in school and you’re smart, but your grades aren’t good enough to be labeled as a nerd or a geek.
You love Halloween and the color black, but you won’t feel comfortable wearing gothic clothing (because they aren’t comfortable) and you won’t feel comfortable standing out that much. You honestly wouldn’t even like the goth and emo appearances if it hadn’t been for your cousin or Abby from NCIS who started that trend for you because your personality doesn’t exactly fit either one.
Honestly, you’ve never fully fit in anywhere, and guess what…
It’s okay.
You’ll become used to this, and you won’t even fit well within your own family.
The adults and cousins in your life are mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, food service & customer service business workers, and engineers.
Meanwhile, you’re an aspiring writer and/or editor, and you lean towards not wanting to get married or have children. You can’t even label yourself as the black sheep of the family because one of your cousins took that role.
Your cousins are social butterflies as well and you’re a boring, silent butterfly. You’re also the only natural blonde in a family full of redheads and brunettes, and you always order a sweet iced tea while everyone else orders an UNsweetened iced tea. They will look at you funny and jokingly say something to the effect of:
“You’re weird,” or “You always confuse the waiter/waitress when you order that,” or “You’ve never really been one of us.”
This makes you feel the need to order water, and perm/dye your hair red and brunette for years, but I promise you that eventually you won’t feel the need to conform to the family anymore.
You’ll learn to embrace your different taste in drinks and your blonde highlights instead of hating them, and you’ll even feel bold enough to dye half of your hair another color that is different from everyone in your family: black.
b. You’re unique.
However, you’re not going to take “unique” as a positive quality for a while because you still don’t fit in at school. It would help a little if you stood out, but you don’t – you’re pretty invisible to most. You’re that kid who sits in the back corner of the classroom and never participates, and people will talk over you because they don’t even know that you’re talking.
This will make you feel small and insignificant, but that’s only because you’re not letting your true self shine.
You need to let your true self shine in order to stand out. You may not fully fit in at any school you go to, like the public middle school and private Catholic high school, or any softball team that you’re on – but you can still attempt to stand out.
You need to start looking at the positives in the situation instead of the negatives.
You still have a healthy amount of friends. It’s true that you’re never going to have an actual group of friends to hang out with because none of your friends know/hang out with each other.
Instead, you’ll have a variety of them that belong to different cliques and you’ll always feel like you’re the tag-along whenever you try to fit into one of those crowds when you’re with that specific friend (or two).
But you’re the only one who feels that way about yourself.
You’re also unique in your academics. You’re that kid who’s going to win the Most Promising Young Writers award at the age of thirteen while simultaneously getting accepted into the Douglass Science Institute for Women at Rutgers University – a week-long summer camp every summer that you’re in high school.
In college you start off as a Geology major, English minor, and a Leadership Certificate. People will look at you funny and say:
“Well, that’s a strange combination.”
Those are three completely different fields of study, and you honestly don’t fully fit into any of them: you’re not that great at science and math – you pass with B’s instead of A’s, unlike all of the other science major classmates. You’re not that great at understanding and interpreting literature like most of your other English major/minor friends. You’re also not that much of a leader – you’re quiet, shy, and timid – you mostly lead by example.
In the end, you’re going to eventually wish that you appreciated yourself for who you are more – because you’ll realize that the right people you surround yourself with will genuinely love your uniqueness. It’s who you are.
So, we’ve learned that you’re a mixture of all different kinds of things and that it’s okay, but underneath it all…
c. You’re also a fighter.
Truth is, because you don’t have that raw natural talent for that one thing in particular, you have that much more to prove in order to gain a position in whatever you want to be involved in.
You’ve earned the right to call yourself a fighter.
You’ll have to work really hard to prove your worth in every single situation, despite preconceived notions of your parents “handing you everything growing up.”
Let’s get one thing straight: your parents may be scientists, and they may have been able to afford a house in a nice neighborhood, make it so you don’t actually have to work until your nineteen, pay for a private high school in a different state, as well as your entire undergraduate schooling out-of-state without having to take out student loans… but that doesn’t mean you don’t know what it means to work, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t fight for everything you achieve with the outrageously gracious opportunity that your parents worked hard for as well.
Softball.
Never let anyone tell you that you don’t try, because you do.
You work too hard and everyone around you will find it shocking that a “pretty, young, blonde, white girl actually wants to work hard.” You’ll swallow the offense you feel, smile, and openly take it as a compliment.
You’ll have to work your a** off starting at eleven years old, but I can proudly tell you that you’ll make every single softball team (recreational league, travel softball, junior varsity, varsity, and division III college) that you try out for. You train hard for seven to eight years in this sport, and even though your personality doesn’t fit that of a jock, you earn the right to call yourself one.
You have battled your way through a softball career: from top to bottom. You’ll make your first travel softball team at age eleven, and you’ll surprisingly do so with very little training prior. It’ll basically be a whim. Your first travel coach will call your father after tryouts are over and say:
“Well, technically she’s not good enough to make this team, but I think she has potential and I want to see what I can do with it.” ß This should be great news, and it technically is. However, in one fowl swoop, you’re about to be tackled to the ground for the first time and dragged through the mud for two years.
Your coach’s name will be Buddy. You’ll learn that names can deceive sometimes.
You see… Buddy won’t actually care that you’ve never played travel softball before. He won’t care that you need to be taught how to play competitively. He won’t care that you’re a quiet, shy, and good kid who never mouths off to anyone. He won’t care that you’re only eleven years old. He won’t actually give a s*** about your potential – he’ll just want to win, and he’ll trample on whoever he needs to in order to achieve it.
And guess what…you’re the baby on the team who screws up more than anyone else because you have no idea what you’re doing. So prepare for the stampede.
And I hope to God that you’re listening to me when I say that every disgustingly offensive and self-esteem-damaging thing this horrible man says to you is not true.
You’ll be his “PROJECT” – that’s what he’ll call you. He’ll try to mold you into the toughest softball player ever, and you’ll try so hard to fit that mold. Therefore, you’ll also be his “WHIPPING POST” – what every other parent on the team will call you. He’ll know that he’ll never get any lip from you – that you’ll just sit there and take it.
So he’ll scream and yell at you until he’s blue in the face – even if it isn’t your fault. That’ll be his way of making you tough and bringing out your potential, and when you cry because you have no idea what you ever did to deserve getting pummeled like this, you’ll get yelled at for that too.
Please know that you didn’t do ANYTHING to deserve this.
He’ll insult you more times than you can count with words like “crybaby,” “stupid,” and “turd.” He’ll threaten you in order to scare you into not making a mistake, ever. He’ll humiliate you in front of your parents, other family members, your teammates and their parents, and plenty of other people at tournaments by screaming at you on the field to “get your head out of you’re a**” for making a stupid mistake.
Your confidence will shatter into a million pieces. For once, you’ll actually embrace your invisible nature. You will be so desperate to not be noticed during a game that you’ll pray to God that the ball never gets hit to you. You’ll end up throwing the ball to any random person closest to you so that you don’t get blamed for whatever goes wrong. You’ll only want to hit singles that get you thrown out so you don’t have to run the bases. You’ll want to sit the bench. You’ll try to convince your father that you don’t need to go to tournaments or practices anymore. You’ll basically be done.
However, no matter how many times you say you’re going to quit, you won’t. No matter how many times you cry, scream, and rip your hair out – you’ll stick with it.
And after two years of torture, you’ll finally get out of this situation.
You’ll graduate from middle school and you’ll be one of the captains of your high school feeder softball team. Coach John, your assistant coach, will also coach a travel softball team, and he’ll take you to Nationals that second year since Buddy will cancel yours.
You’ll work extremely hard for Coach John right off the bat (pun intended) for fear of getting yelled at if you give anything less than everything you’ve got. Coach John and the assistant coaches (your dad eventually will become one of them) will act somewhat surprised that you work so hard without having to be coerced, and they’ll sometimes have to remind you that it’s okay to take it easy.
This will be something that you’re told repeatedly when you actually start working minimum-wage jobs in college.
They’ll begin to pick up the pieces of your shattered confidence and you’ll finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. But you’ll also see the positive aspects that came out of the extremely negative situation that you were just in.
Despite the negativity, Buddy will teach you how to work hard, persevere, and fight.
He’ll teach you how to give everything you’ve got, and start standing up for yourself, which will translate well into how you handle your schoolwork as well as future jobs. He’ll teach you to never feel satisfied, which is important in softball. He’ll also take you onto his team even though you technically weren’t good enough to make the cut, and you probably would not have made such a big impression on your future coaches if you hadn’t just come back from hell.
He may destroy you, but he gave you a chance nonetheless – and you become a different, stronger person because of that experience.
And now those positive aspects will shine on your new travel softball team – a team that you will stick with for the rest of your travel softball career. You’ll go on to do great things with these people. You’ll grow as a player, and you’ll finally start feeling like you belong in this world.
So, despite all of the negativity that sprouted from this situation… it also prepared you the obstacles you come across in your future.
School.
Over the course of the next few years, you will continuously have problems juggling softball and school. You will go to school every day, practice and study every night, and then play games or practice on weekends. Your father will put tremendous pressure on you to perform well in both – and you suddenly won’t feel like you have a life anymore.
But in the end, you’ll graduate from high school with honors and attend the first college of your choice – you’ll get accepted to 3 colleges out of the 5 that you applied to. You will also graduate college with honors.
In the meantime: you’ll have to fight to stay on top of things. You will be juggling school practices as well as travel softball practices. You will go to your own personal trainer on the side in order to increase your speed, strength, and agility. You will go through periods of eating EVERYTHING in sight as well as nothing.
You’ll have to fight through injuries and bulls***. You won’t necessarily like your teammates because they’ll be mean, petty, and they’ll gossip – A LOT. There will be times when you feel ashamed to be one of them. There’s going to be so much softball drama ahead of you, but trust me…the fight to get through it will be worth it. You will win games and change history with these girls. You will grow up together and learn from each other. They’ll be your sisters and you’ll love them anyway.
Trust.
However, since you’ll fight for everything – you’ll end up fighting against yourself sometimes. Trusting people (and letting people in) will be a difficult thing for you to do, so you’ll fight to push people away better than anyone I know. And when you actually find that special person, you’ll work hard to hold onto them with the tightest grip ever imagined.
You’ll fight for every friendship and relationship that you’ll have because you’ll feel that you’re difficult to handle and you’ll never find someone who will want to handle you again. It’s true that some of these friends and boyfriends will slip from your grip, especially in high school, but in the end, it’s for the best.
Because the friends who remain in your life over the course of the next ten years are the ones you actually belong with.
Protection.
On that note, don’t shut people out before you even give them a chance.
As I briefly touched on before, you fight too hard to protect yourself from disappointment and toxic people. You’ll keep your guard up far too strongly. You won’t think people actually like you – so in order to spare yourself the pain, you won’t even let most of them try.
What you don’t realize is that not only will you be keeping out the toxic people in your life…but you’ll be keeping out the good ones too.
Overall, there are a lot of things that will define who you are within the next ten years, and it’s okay that you don’t fully fit into one specific category. Embrace all of your qualities, the positives and the negatives. Don’t think of yourself as a loser because you won’t fit in or stand out.
You are a clique jumping, unique, fighter who has a lot to offer, and you deserve to have some self-acceptance for once.
- Taking Breaks and Letting Yourself Love Are Important
Let me be the first to warn you… the lack of self-acceptance, the immense amount of pressure to perform in softball and school, and the constant fighting attitude will combine to break you when you turn sixteen. What I’m about to explain is without a doubt the worst time of your life (so far). However, this experience will also teach you a lot, and in the end, it will give you the necessary tools that you will need to take care of yourself in college. But first…
You will meet a boy, and he will eventually become your very first boyfriend in the fall of your junior year of high school.
He’ll be funny, handsome, and loving. You’ll never have met anyone like him. He’ll treat you like a queen and you’ll be happier than you ever thought you could be. You’ll write cute notes to each other and you’ll talk all the time. Things will go smoothly for a while, but then you’ll start to slip.
While you’re in your first relationship…you’ll be in AP Chemistry, and you won’t be doing very well in it. You won’t have taken your SATs yet or decided where you want to go to college. It’s recruit year for softball: will you even want to play in college?
So, your father will layer the pressure on thick and you’ll start to panic. You’ll feel like you can never do enough for him, so you’ll start working harder. You’ll practice softball every day and then you’ll start to stay up late – doing homework, studying, and working ahead.
You won’t remember what its like to relax.
You’ll eventually start a trend of only getting 2 hours of sleep per night. You’ll start taking SAT classes, but you’re just not good at standardize testing. And you’ll end up withdraw failing from AP Chemistry because you’re just not good at it – your first withdraw and failing grade that drops your GPA like a sinking rock.
You’ll continue to have problems at home because your father will be stressed beyond belief with his job. Therefore, he’ll take it out on you, and you’ll give it right back to him. You’ll start getting into screaming matches with him on a daily basis. You’ll cry nonstop. You’ll both constantly lose your voices. You’ll put your mother in the middle of these fights and you’ll both make her choose a side.
Either way, before you know it, your relationship with EVERYONE will begin to suffer tremendously because you’ll start treating them like crap (because YOU’LL feel like crap) – but the worst of all to suffer will be the relationship with your boyfriend.
At this point, you’ll be desperate for something to change. You’ll beg your mom to take you to a therapist, and that therapist will diagnose you with depression and severe anxiety. 
You’ll be thrown for quite a spin for a moment – you won’t expect it to sound that serious. And that’s when your relationship will start to really suffer.
It’ll slowly become more and more toxic from that point on. But you’ll be so in love with this boy that you’ll be willing to do almost anything to keep him, and you’ll be almost positive that he feels the same way, even though you’ll keep pushing him away. You’ll drag him down, and you won’t look at the positives anymore.
You’ll be so worried about everything to the point where your stomach will decide that it no longer wants food. And acid reflux will make it so you never want to eat again. You’re already skinny because your metabolism is high, so you’ll start dropping weight like crazy.
You’ll also start losing all of your friends – something that typically happens in your first relationship, but that doesn’t mean you will be expecting it. You’ll realize that if you stop instigating all of your conversations with people, that no one will put forth the effort to talk to you.
You’ll think that your annoying, boring, awkward, and weird – so you won’t fight to keep those friends because you’ll think that they actually don’t want to be your friend.
You’ll feel like a failure. You won’t take the SATs that year because you’re just not ready. You won’t be able to make any kind of decisions or concentrate anymore – let alone where you want to go to college, what you want to major in, and if you want to play softball. This’ll frustrate your father even more. And you won’t be doing well in school anymore – you’ll be ready to give up. You’ll feel isolated, scared, and lonely.
This will be your rock bottom – it’ll be clear that you have a problem. But if there’s anything you learn from this experience, let it be that: you are not fully to blame.
You’re going to wish that you didn’t let yourself believe that it was “all your fault” for so long.
Fortunately, you’ll eventually be put on medicine that helps you feel better.
But unfortunately, all of your teachers and high school coaches will be informed of your problem by the time you start the healing process. You’ll feel embarrassed, but your high school softball coach will decide to help pull you out of this once and for all.
All you’ll really want to do right now is quit softball – but he won’t let you do that. He’ll make you stay busy, check up on you daily, and he will do his best to make softball a better experience for you than it has been for a long time.
And you’ll be glad that he did.
Your high school will go on make history by winning three LVC championships in a row, and your class will have amped up the softball program at your school so much that the recruits for years to come will be nothing short of amazing.
That program won’t be as successful as it will be without you.
Meanwhile, your teachers will do everything they can to help you pass their classes after you give up halfway through the year. They’ll work with you because they’ll understand your situation. At the same time, your father will ease up on you. Practices won’t seem so intense and pressure-filled anymore.
Your relationship with your boyfriend will begin to improve as well, but another spoiler alert, like most first-loves…the relationship won’t last.
Despite this, you’ll begin to realize that the universe is giving you your first needed break.
Here is what we’ve learned from the situation:
This is your first major wake-up call.
You’re a fighter, but you can only fight for so long. You can’t do everything, but you can’t give up either.
The friends that left you (or became toxic for you in that situation) without a second thought were never really your friends to begin with. Go ahead and let them go, even though it won’t be easy.
On the other hand, you will reconnect with a couple of friends who weren’t there the entire time you were hurting – but you’ll realize that they were going through a transition of moving to a different school as well as a different home, and/or they were going through hard times as well, so they kept to themselves and had no idea what was going on with you. Otherwise, you realize that they would have been there – so you keep them in your life.
Your first relationship will teach you a lot as well.
He taught you how to love.
After the relationship ends, you’ll never think you’ll be able to live without him (*ahem* you can). And the reason you could break each other’s hearts in the relationship over and over again is because the love you felt for him was painfully real. Don’t let anyone tell you that it wasn’t – because believe me, you will be told over and over again that what you felt for him wasn’t love. It was.
Now you know that it’s not okay to be completely dependent on someone else for happiness.
You will want to move on from this experience and never look back…but it doesn’t work that way. You’ll think back on this experience almost daily for a LONG time. And I can tell you that it gets better.
You can’t erase it – you can only deal with it. So learn to dwell on the positives of the experience instead of the negatives, and you’ll eventually meet new people in your life who help you do that.
This certainly isn’t the happiest time of your life…but it’s one of the most important.
- Letting Go Can Heal and Open Doors to New Beginnings
However, now that you know what the worst thing that can happen when you completely give up DOESN’T mean that it’s never okay to give up. There’s a quote that you’ll end up seeing all over the Internet when you get a Facebook, but it’ll be one of the realest quotes for you:
“Giving up doesn’t mean that you’re weak…it means that you’re strong enough to let go.”
a. Pink & fluffy.
The hardest thing you’re ever going to give up will be when you turn seventeen years old. After the toughest experience of your life, you’ll end up losing the two people who were there for you the most: your high school boyfriend and your best friend.
Losing your high school “pink & fluffy” best friend will be ultimately worse.
You’ll be the “Happy Goth” to her “Pink and Fluffy.” You two won’t be more different from each other, but that’s what you’ll think makes you guys perfect. She’ll take care of you and love you like a sister, and you two will talk daily for about three years straight. You’ve honestly never had a stronger friendship before in you’re entire life.
Don’t worry – it won’t be the last time you feel this way with someone again.
Even though you’re the one who will instigate the fall out, it’s still going to be equally as painful for you as it is for her. You’ll love her like family, but you’ll feel that she wronged you.
But underneath it all, you’ll eventually realize that she was trying to do what was best for everyone.
However, you won’t care in that moment. And now that you’ll know that you need to take breaks – you’ll realize that you’ll also need a break from both of them. So you’ll call it quits with her, just like your boyfriend did with you.
You’ll never have actually hurt a human being that badly before, and it won’t make you feel good.
In fact, you will feel like a horrible person for a long time afterwards. You’ll have shared a lot of good times together and you’ll miss them terribly after its over.
But it’s okay – you’ll have your reasons, and they are still valid. This entire situation is not completely and totally your fault. So, give yourself a break.
The only thing that you can do now is let go.
It won’t be easy, but you’ll finally be able to do so once you graduate from high school. Once you stop seeing her every day, it’ll become a little easier to do. And halfway through college, she’ll contact you, and you will both apologize. You’ll finally have closure and you will both move on with your lives.
Unfortunately, this won’t be the first time that you have to let go of something special… or the last.
b. The Second Boyfriend – or in other words – The Big Mistake.
Unlike high school, you’ll come to realize that college does give you the safety net of figuring out what happens after you give something up and try something new.
The first example will be your second boyfriend during your very first semester of college. You will meet yet another boy: a sophomore, fraternity boy, and engineering major. He’ll be interested in everything you do, love that you take school and softball seriously, and genuinely like the positive sides of you.
You’ll think he’s nice, funny, and cute. You won’t have that many things in common besides sports, but you’ll like him anyways. You’ll talk for about a month and then you’ll officially start dating at a frat party on Halloween.
Everything will go well for the first couple of weeks, but then things will start to take a turn again when you get extremely stressed over school and softball – as per usual. Things will get really tough for you again, and you’ll start to struggle.
You’ll also panic because the last time you struggled with grades and softball, it didn’t go so well. This will also be your first time away from your parents and you’ll freak out. You’ll think that your boyfriend will be understanding of the situation… but he is up until a point.
That should be your first red flag.
He’ll get annoyed with you, and understandably so. He’ll be frustrated that there’s nothing he can say to make you feel better, and he’ll be tired of the relationship being so strained and heavy. He will complain about you never texting him first (again, understandable given what you went through). He won’t think that you’re taking any of his advice about school, which is untrue, but still understandable to assume.
He all of a sudden won’t like the fact that you’ll be constantly overwhelmed and depressed over stress with your family. He’ll think that you should stop focusing on them when you’ll beg to differ – because it’s your family.
However, you’ll know that all of this bothers him, even when he doesn’t say so. You’ll do everything in your power to fix the problem because you’ve already been down this road before. So, in order to change things up, you’ll try to keep the conversations light instead of heavy, you’ll try to text him first more often (no matter how much it makes you cringe because you automatically think that he doesn’t want to talk to you), and you’ll attempt to keep the focus on him.
But before you know it – he’ll start “play-fighting” with you. See, I’m putting that in quotes because that’s what you will call it, when it is actually called BULLYING. He’ll pick on you constantly over things that you’re sensitive about over text message and in person, and then he’ll tell you that you’re not funny when you try to make fun of him.
That’s the thing about emotionally abusive relationships: he’ll be allowed to make fun of you, but you’ll never be allowed to make fun of him because “it’s mean, it’s rude, and it hurts his feelings.” You’ll also never be allowed to be angry when he makes fun of you – he’ll always say: “You need to lighten up. I don’t feel like talking to you when you take this s*** seriously.”
This should be your final straw. You should have let him go LONG before you actually do.
But thankfully, after a LONG month of dating…you will actually make him break up with you because he’ll be avoiding the issue, and you’ll be trying to force it. You won’t feel great about it for a while, but in the long run, you’ll feel relief.
But because you won’t feel that in the moment, you’ll lie (but in your defense, you actually do feel like you’re telling the truth at this time) and you’ll tell him that you “love him” in a desperate attempt to keep him, and he’ll respond with “Yeah, well, I’m going to bed now.”
Now, this is actually a situation in which you should listen to the people telling you: “You didn’t really love him.” About a year and a half after the fact, you’ll realize that those people are right in regards to this specific relationship.
But in that moment of desperation, you’ll never feel so humiliated, beaten down, and sad. Unfortunately, you’ll be stuck in an on-and-off relationship with him for an entire year before you finally let him go at the beginning of your sophomore year.
You will eventually feel ashamed for even being in this relationship in the first place, especially after having a first boyfriend who treated you like a queen. In the end, it will be for the best, because it’ll free you up to open doors to new relationships.
Now you know exactly what you DON’T want in a relationship – let it go.
c. Softball.
During freshman year of college, you’re going to have to make one of the toughest decisions of your life – and your father won’t make it easy.
You’ll be tired of feeling physically ill after every single practice. You’ll be tired of feeling like you’re missing out on life because you’re always juggling school and softball. You’ll be tired of not fitting in with your teammates. You’ll be tired of the drama. But most of all…you’ll be tired of always feeling tired.
So, during Christmas break, you’ll end up deciding that it’s time to quit. As a result, your father will have the biggest falling out with you that your relationship has ever suffered, but don’t worry, it’s not permanent.
You two won’t talk for the next six months because you’ll be tired of fighting like this with him. You’ll be sick of feeling like a horrible person for making any kind of decision that he doesn’t like and you’ll be tired of him making light of how you feel.
You’ll end up realizing that you’ll need that separation from him completely for a while.
You’ll need to establish an adult relationship with him in order to move forward, and thankfully, your relationship will slowly repair itself and benefit from this time off.
But you won’t know what life is going to be like now that you won’t be playing softball anymore. It’s going to be terrifying and depressing at the same time, especially since you’ll be leaning mostly on one parent for a while.
Again, don’t worry – you’ll find your place.
You’ll miss softball each and every day – I still miss it. However, you’ll throw yourself into school and other activities.
You’ll apply to become an EXCEL Leader at your college – the weeklong educational camp-like event that occurs the week before classes for incoming freshman who got accepted into the Leadership Program. And surprisingly, you’ll be chosen to become a Leader at that camp instead of the participant.
You will participate in EXCEL for three years, and even though you won’t fully fit in with the other leaders, you’ll finally start to see yourself as a leader and your skills become stronger.
You’ll also find the campus literary magazine and that’ll start you on a path you never thought you’d take – editing and getting your creative writing published. You’ve always been into creative writing, but you think of it as a hobby right now.
Well, eventually you’ll start thinking of it as a potential career.
It’s a scary switch and you won’t know if it’s the right choice, but trust me, it’ll make you MUCH happier.
So, you’ll switch majors and minors. You’ll get hired to be a Writing Tutor on campus, and you’ll be one of the first ones to get CRLA certified at your college.
The moral of this experience is: Don’t be afraid to give up something that doesn’t make you happy with the expectation of trying something new.
Truth is, you’re never going to be truly happy playing softball. You’ll love it, but you’ll never fully allow yourself to enjoy it.
However, you now have the proof you need to feel a little more secure the next time you decide to let go of something important in your life.
- Family Isn’t Always Through Blood.
You are currently at a time in your life where family means everything to you. Your parents are your main support network – your cousins on your mom’s side are like your sisters – all four of your grandparents are loving and caring – your aunts and uncles make you laugh – and overall, you love hanging out with them and you wish that you could live closer to all of them.
However, something you’ll learn in college is that your family isn’t as perfect as you currently think it is, and you eventually won’t feel as loved or accepted by them as you do right now…
But the people (and pets) you surround yourself with as you become an adult will fill the gap, and they will fully accept and appreciate you for who you are.
But right now – you love Christmas and summer breaks. You look forward to them each and every year because that’s when you and your parents visit your mother’s family.
You always have fun when you visit – everyone is excited to see you, they fight to spend as much time with you as possible while you’re there, and you genuinely feel happy. You call it your home, even though your actual home is twelve hours away.
And after high school, you’ll get your wish – you’ll finally get to move there. However, I hate to tell you this, but it’s not going to be like you imagined. It’s not going to be the way that it used to be whenever you visited in the past. Everything drastically changes, and we both know how much you hate change.
But another spoiler-alert… it’ll be okay.
The amount of problems your family encounters over the next ten years will be too numerous to go into detail about – so, you’ll just have to experience it without warning when you grow older.
Overall, you and your cousins will begin to grow apart, despite the fact that you used to be like sisters. Your grandparents will lose their retirement by using up all of their money on a house that they will eventually be evicted from. Your favorite aunt and mother will have a huge falling out that creates a big divide between everyone. Basically… this world is going to get thrown upside down.
You will also experience the drawbacks of being a hoarder first-hand as you help move everyone’s stuff into four expensive storage units that will stay there for the next three years.
If there’s one thing you learn from this section of the letter: DO NOT KEEP EVERY LITTLE THING THAT DOESN’T HAVE EXTREME SENTIMENTAL VALUE. DON’T BE AFRAID TO THROW SOME THINGS AWAY. YOU WILL REGRET IT LATER IN LIFE IF YOU KEEP EVERYTHING – JUST DON’T DO IT, okay?
Despite the fact that your family is full of engineers (and former ones), chemists, teachers, and doctors – suddenly, no one will have enough money anymore. You’ll have enough to barely sustain you, and everyone will start working like crazy to keep your heads above water.
That’s when everyone will start becoming extremely bitter towards one another – more so than ever before.
But try not to let this bring you down too much, because you’ll always have memories.
Eventually, it will get to the point where people will completely turn on one another. People will start acting out of character – and they will unfortunately remain that way. Relationships between you all will never be the same because of certain things that have been said to one another. You’ll start dreading holidays because they become a stressful drag instead of exciting fun.
It won’t feel like home anymore.
Whenever you all do get together, the happiness will be as fake as can be. You’ll know exactly why one person hates another because people feel safe confiding in you since you’re so quiet and never say anything. You’ll also have to act like you’re on whoever-is-confiding-in-you’s side in that moment – even if you don’t.
Now, it’ll make things super awkward between you and everyone else because you’ll know too much, you’ll take everyone’s arguments into consideration, and you’ll think they’re all valid to an extent.
Which will make it impossible for you to pick a side, but please know that you won’t have to – so don’t stress yourself out trying to do so.
Being caught in the middle of these fights and not being able to share all of this information that you now have (in fear of really hurting someone) will frustrate you to the point of wanting to get out of the family completely, even though you can’t. You’ll have nowhere to go, but you’ll look for any kind of escape you possibly can.
And thankfully, your college will be out-of-state – five hours from your family. So, you’ll have the chance to create your own safe haven again with the perfect roommate.
You two will instantly become best friends during your freshman year. She’ll share the same sense of style as you, she’ll play track and field, and she’ll be a very tolerant, laid-back, overall amazing human being.
She’ll enjoy listening and talking to you – she’ll think you’re funny, and she likes it when you open up to her. She’ll be genuinely concerned for you during rough times, and she’ll make you laugh when you want to cry.
She won’t try to fix you, take care of you, or poke and prod you when you don’t feel like talking the way that your high school best friend did – she respects that that’s not what you want. She’ll sympathize with you and love you like a sister.
Overall, she’ll be an awesome friend during your college years, and you will be extremely lucky to have met her.
She’ll teach you what friendship is really supposed to look like. This is a friend you don’t want to ever let go of – even when you two eventually begin to grow apart.
The two of you will do an excellent job of creating a new, loving, acceptable home for yourselves over those four years. You’ll both be extremely excited to be back after visiting your “homes” for a long time.
You’ll do things like dye your hair together, take each other to get piercings, go out to dinner, show each other stupid/funny Youtube videos, and text each other funny pictures just to make each other laugh. You’ll have the time of your life with her, even with school stressing you out.
But most of all…she accepts you for who you truly are, doesn’t hold things against you, and doesn’t find your severe anxiety to be a nuisance like your family does.
You will be each other’s new home. You’ll tell each other that you wouldn’t have survived college with any other roommate, and if either one of you ever dropped out or transferred, then the other one would probably end up with a single instead of having another roommate. You’re a perfect match.
Thankfully, this won’t be the only special friendship you’ll have for long.
You will also find another special person who you meet through your roommate during your sophomore year. He’ll be a bit older than you, he’ll have a girlfriend on campus and an apartment close to campus – so you’ll meet at a dinner party that your roommate’s invited to. Of course you’ll feel like a tag along at first, but by the end of the night, you will have made another life-long friend without realizing it.
This will be the beginning of the second semester of your sophomore year, and your first semester of that year will probably be one of the roughest semesters you will ever have in college. You’ll have hit another low point where you cry nonstop and stop talking completely for a long time.
So naturally, your medication dosage increases, and you’ll come back from Christmas break with a new attitude – ready to start fresh again.
But you’re still pretty apprehensive about letting new people into your life after being burned so many times (especially during that first semester of sophomore year). So, going to any type of party is be a huge step up for you – given your social anxiety, and you’ll be happy you took your roommate up on the offer to go with her.
This particular guy will be close friends with your roommate (and she’ll also be friends with his girlfriend), and she’ll trust him – so therefore, you will try to. He’ll take an interest in being your friend as well, and he’ll fight tooth and nail to break down the walls you build around yourself so you can give him a chance. He’ll eventually earn your trust, and you’ll cautiously start letting him in.
You’ll be glad you did.
He’ll slowly work his way up to becoming a huge emotional support in your life (along with your roommate), and you won’t feel like a burden with him. Strangely, he’ll have a chemical imbalance that rarely makes him feel depressed – which is basically winning the lottery of friendship for you.
He will genuinely want to be there for you (again, like your roommate), and you won’t be afraid of dragging him down or scaring him away like every other male (both relationship AND friendship – wise) in your life.
That’s something special that you’ve never experienced.
He’ll be a good shoulder to cry on, and he’ll be upset when you try to fake happiness in front of him. He’ll actually want you to be completely real with him all the time instead of pretending to be happy for his sake.
You’ll wonder how you got so lucky to find a roommate and a guy friend who accept you exactly for who you are, and you’ll also wonder why your family doesn’t.
But you’ve been burned by this before – so you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop with him… but what’s weird this time around is that it never does.
He’ll help you through your anxiety attacks and he’ll give great advice. He will force you to take breaks by dragging you out on walks around the small town where your college resides. He’ll encourage you to vent to him so that you don’t bottle everything up.
But most of all… he’ll also give you one of the biggest opportunities to completely escape your family situation (as well as school) for a few months and focus mostly on yourself (for once) when you turn twenty.
You will get the opportunity to move into one of his empty rooms in his tiny apartment for the summer between your sophomore and junior years in college.
This is big for you because you’ll actually be living on your own for the first time. It won’t be the same as living with your roommate in college where you’re constantly surrounded by school and social-life stress.
This will actually give you the proper time that you need to focus on yourself for once, put your mental health first, and learn how to be independent.
You’ll regulate your sleeping schedule again because you’ve been sleep deprived since junior year of high school. You’ll actually know what freedom feels like for the first time. You’ll go all out and get a cartilage, nose, and bellybutton piercing. You’ll also dye your hair purple and blue during this summer.
You’ll get a job without the help of a parent for the first time. You’ll learn how to cook (somewhat) and you’ll always come home from work to someone who is genuinely excited and happy to see you instead of fake-happy, like your family. You’ll be in an environment where you feel a lot less stress, even though you still have your depressive moments, and it will be one of the greatest experiences of your life.
You’ll also work through your issues with your family by spending the entire summer writing “letters” (or “exposes”) for them on your laptop. They will state everything that you know about them as well as opinions you have, and you’ll have no intentions of showing them to anyone because it’s mostly for therapy.
However, that’s when you’ll first realize that writing is really cathartic for you.
You’ll return to your family and school after the summer is over as a changed/grown person. You’ve finally become more independent – you’ve learned more about adulthood (the positives instead of the negatives – like you’ve seen with your family) from your friend than you have from your parents, who sort of threw you out into the world without much training prior.
Your junior year will be significantly different from your freshman & sophomore years because now you’ll know more about how to properly take care of yourself – you’ll be MUCH better about taking breaks, calling it quits and going to bed, and knowing that its actually okay to cry.
Your two friends will teach you that crying doesn’t make you weak – crying can be a release – and it usually helps you concentrate on homework afterwards.
You’ll develop a steady routine, and your junior year of college will be a lot less stressful and agonizing than the past two years will have been – thanks to the help of your two roommates and best friends.
And of course getting an emotional support animal always helps 🙂
This is the first time you will realize that family isn’t always through blood – sometimes you can find home in the people, pets, and things you surround yourself with.
Conclusion…
Anyway, these are the main 6 things that you are going to take away from the next ten years of your life. It’s a lot, and obviously the two of us still have much more to experience.
Things are still hard for me as an adult, and I get down a lot. However… I can promise you that you’ll learn to deal with it in a way that’s not so extreme or severe. You will become a much stronger, mentally healthier person in the future. You’ll learn from your mistakes, but you’ll always make new ones.
The best thing that I can possibly say to you right now is that everything is going to be okay. One way or another, things will work themselves out. In the meantime, try to take life day by day. You’ll find that you’ll be much happier that way and a lot less stressed about, because it’s the future that terrifies you.
When there’s nothing you can do about a certain situation that causes you suffering – do your best to let it go. It will be hard. But your mental health is more important than anything – including school, family, and sports. So try taking that more seriously.
All in all, whether you feel it or not – there are people who do genuinely care about and love you. You’re never completely alone, and the sooner you realize this, the better.
If nothing else – know that your future self loves you and always will, not matter the age. Take care of yourself, and try to live in the moment.
Thanks in advance for teaching me so much, and I’ll catch you later!
-Your Older Self
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