[A fairly short letter to my fifteen-year-old self. This is not beyond you.]
Molls,
Hey kid. It's been a rough year, hasn't it? But if I'm writing to you, and I'm twenty, and you're fifteen, means you made it through it, didn't ya? Yeah, yeah, I can see that little half-smile, the one we wear when we're like, yeah, I'm good like that. You keep that smile. I wanna see it every day, at least once in the mirror. Even when you don't think you have anything to smile about, I wanna see it.
I know you feel twenty kinds of busted right now. I remember that. Wasn't a good time for us - lots of tears, lots of other emotion, and the fact that Ryan was going to go away to college was seriously freaking us out on the inside. Not that we let anybody see how much that bugged us. But you did good things, too. And good things happened. Remember, you got the highest score out of the freshman on that Language Arts Olympiad thingy? You got a medal, and were all smiley because most of the family was there to see it, too. And it felt like things were looking up again, like things were going right. Um..you win that again. As a senior. You can probably tell that you like English and writing a lot. Well, you more or less kick ass about it.
Another thing you kick ass about? You write one hell of a narration paper your junior year. And you read it in front of the class, and you shed a tear or two because it more or less feels a lot like healing. Takes you two drafts to figure out how to say everything without giving anything away to the only boy sitting in the room - who has an oblique reference in the narration - and you rock out with it. As only you can. Coincidentally, it's the same year that you really get a love of movies and write some pretty good stuff in creative writing. Both of which have appeared on the blog (this blog) and one that appears on a literary site on the internet (you get privileges back, don't worry) where people read and comment. They like it. Some are confused by it, others just roll with it.
You do really well ignoring the politics of high school as best you can. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You do well in the end. You graduate our lucky number.
Remember how we go off and on about every other year with being really sick? Well...you get sick. And nobody really knows what's wrong because our body is awesome like that. But the friends that you make in college - and I'm not telling you where, because I don't want to bias you in any way - are amazing. They buy you the twelve scooper from Friendly's because you went without dairy for two weeks.
There's a few more scars than you're used to. Some physical - you have three on your belly - and some are emotional - Ben - but you get through them. You take a shine to Ben and Jerry's ice cream and you do well. Granted, things have gotten rough the past couple of semesters, but you hang tough. You hang in there. Iron-Man soccer only with real life. Breathe. Sometimes you forget to do that.
You're a good person. You've got your moments - your days - when things don't go well, and you can't help but voice that opinion very loudly. That's okay. People listen (you've found the right ones!) and you have a blog with which to outlet yourself. This is your blog. This is part of your writing. Part of your personality that you share with people who won't know you in the world not made of the internet, and that's okay. Through your writing they know you. And that's how it should be.
You're still working on the novel. Six years later, and you're still working on it. Jack's dad's had three name changes. No pressure.
You get your ear pierced again. And by ear, I mean your cartilage on your right side. Mom and dad are pretty much okay with that. She's a little disappointed that you didn't tell her, but it's nothing like when you got the tattoo. I'm not joking. And they're okay with that, too. And believe me - you know this, too - it feels so much better not to keep anything from mama.
The hair. We have this philosophy that hair grows back. Okay. It just takes a really long time.
Eventually, you get a car. You will love this car. You will adore this car. You will name this car "Fred." You will park Fred next to a bunch of newer, more expensive cars when you go to college. And you will chuckle at this.
You're a special person to a special someone. She's three feet tall at the moment, is you incarnate at that age, and absolutely loves you. You stomped in the mud with her.
Heather. Feels like she's far away, huh? She's not. Not really. You have one summer when you get close - like you're three years apart instead of twelve - and it just grows from there. She's your sister. She's been there, done most of it, and lived to tell the tale. Trust her. And she makes these really good things called Monster Cookies - she will bribe you for writing with them - and she loves you. She'll always be your big sister, and you can't - and won't - ever forget that.
Not only do you have a job, you like it. Really. You've been there three years. And you'll hopefully be there three more.
There are a ton more things I could say about us - about our good stuff and our bad. The important part is this: even though it feels like the world is going to end, and things can't possibly get worse (you practically married Murphy, therefore you know things can always get worse) you lived through it. You grew stronger. More you. More us. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the person you're - we're - going to become, even if the way there was heavily under construction in places, and filled with gaping sinkhole craters masquerading as potholes in others. We did it. And that's all that matters.
Well done, Molls. Well done.
Love,
Louise
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