Dear Me,
Right now you are seventeen, and your heart is broken.
I have started so many letters to you, my younger self. Words of advice and wisdom that I hoped would lead you down a better path. One with less pain and more triumph.
Words of caution, don’t date that boy, don’t lose your temper, don’t throw it all away. I can point to every age I made a mistake, tell you to the day to not go out. Stay home from school, don’t say hello, just go home. I know every heart ache you have coming, and every heart ache you have felt. I pick seventeen to write to you because this is the one mistake I don’t feel made my life better.
This isnt a warning or a guide on how to fix it.
If I could go back in time and look at my younger self and say just one word to you I would. I would pick the day you wrote that stupid post and I would turn off your computer, look you in the eye and just say...just say sorry...That would be my one word. Sorry.
Because even now, seven years later, I don’t know if I would stop you. I know the pain of what are you doing. I know how alone you will feel. I know you will spend the next several months crying yourself to sleep every night. I know when eighteen comes you won’t have the energy to go like you had planned. I know everything that is going to happen in the next seven years for you.
And I can only apologize.
Because I know we love him. I know we can see that beautiful family with him. I know every scared thought, and secret whispered into the dark. You and your friends joked, cried and hated that Jon was your first love. Until you met Travis. They don’t know. But you do. You never loved Jon. It was crush. But Travis...
You never forget your first love. That person you picture spending the rest of your life with.
I wouldn’t stop you.
I just got an email. Another piece in my plan to move forward with my life. Asked to be in a production. Working on following my acting dream.
So I won’t stop you. I will look you in the eye and I will apologize. I will hold you close and tell you the truth. It’s going to hurt and you may never get over Travis. But the mistakes you made, the choices you made, are giving you strength to do what you want with your life.
I cannot say for certain that if you didn’t make that mistake, that if you stayed with Travis, you wouldn’t still be working on your dreams. And I know that family, is part of your dreams. But right now, you are seventeen and I am almost twenty four. Family can wait. Don’t put your dreams on hold for something that will hold you back.
Ending the relationship with Travis, will hurt. And part of you will miss him, even seven years later. But you will be okay.
Because seven years later you will have learned to love yourself and your dreams. Putting them first for now.
Someday you will have that family, that little country house, and the peace of mind that you lived the life you wanted to to live.
But right now, you are seventeen, and your heart is broken.
Write that post, cry and scream and feel that pain so that when you are twenty three, you can finally finish writing one of these letter.
Love,
Your future self.
