Dear little me,
I can see you sitting right now in the little room you were so excited about with the blue duvet and bookshelf waiting to be filled, looking at the next four years like they contained more time than you could imagine. I know you're feeling wonder and fear and trepidation at the mountain in front of you, with no idea who the person who comes out the other side will be.
Infinite possibilities have collapsed into the four years that are memories now. Turns out, even though it felt like you went through a caterpillar-to-butterfly raze-down-the-buildings-and-start-again transformation every semester, you're still pretty much the same person. You're still convinced you're going to fail things until the last minute when you realize everything was fine. You still try too hard to be the person other people want you to be (although with the help of long conversations with friends, some crazy adventures, and a slow process of realizing that you love yourself, you've gotten a lot better at just being).
I want you to know a few things. First, get out of your bed, take that chip off your shoulder, and go and meet people with your heart wide open. The boy you're crying over right now – he fades into the terrain behind you. The friends you make, though, they become rivers flowing alongside you – they are there for the crazy idea sessions and midnight bike rides and all of the (many) times you co-opt them into some new weird social experiment. I know exposing your heart to every gust and quake hurts sometimes, but it will also bring you the deepest, most magical relationships you've experienced. Slowly, those around you will open their hearts too and one day (after so many hours of anxious uncertainty and rejection and wanting to give up and trying again anyway) you will look around you and realize that you developed the community you always prayed for. There will be many years and long nights of loneliness, but eventually (without fanfare, and almost without you noticing) the uphill will end and the downhill will begin – you've almost forgotten what it felt like to not be sure if anyone understands you or would catch you if you fell.
Second, know that you have everything you need already. When you're curled up on the floor falling apart because you're far from home and you don't feel like you belong in the strange place you are, it will feel like you have nothing left inside to keep going. You do. Every single time, you stand up again. Go to therapy (and don't stop, even during junior spring when the messy complexity of the relationship you're in leaves you too ashamed to talk to anyone) – your therapist is an actual magician and gives you so much insight into yourself. Trust yourself. When you break up with your best friend and it feels like the home you were building for yourself uprooted and floated away, don't keep running back looking for it. You are your own anchor, and you already know the answer if you just listen.
Third, you don't need to try so hard. I know you're not sure what you're worth, and so you let every external event tell you something about who you are as a person. It turns out, life is so much more stressful when your worth is determined by your performance. It will take you many years, long hours of introspecting in cafes, and a lot of therapy sessions to realize that you don't need to view everything that goes wrong as a signal of who you are. You are valuable, no matter what, and the world can never tell you otherwise.
And finally, because you still love to give strategic advice about how to optimize your life (yes, you have many documents written up about this): Invest in things that compound. Get your foundation right, and everything comes more easily.
- True, ride or die, friendships. Your closest friends don't look quite how you expect them to. Let people in (really, I know you think you're good at being vulnerable but you're not). Reach out, more than you feel comfortable with. Respond to people a little more (ok, a lot more. You're still pretty bad at this but for your own future self's sake, please start working on this asap).
- Be into what you're into. You think of yourself as a generalist, but really it's just a facade to cover the fact that you're insecure that you don't have a niche. It's ok – in fact, the people you end up respecting the most love this about you. Your weird combination of interests gets you your dream job, so keep pursuing things that are interesting (without needing to justify why!) and keep resisting the tidal wave currents to go in the directions everyone else is going. You spent so long running from uncertainty and seeking ground beneath your feet – at the end, you'll look back in awe at the fact that you had the entire world gaping in front of you. You don't need to have everything figured out, you don't need to have a perfect narrative tying everything together, and you really don't need to optimize for the best possible thing you could spend your time on. Truly. It's pretty liberating. Spend a little less time contemplating which things are the most optimal to do, and a little more time just doing them. When you start putting things out into the world, it is so empowering and uplifting to have the world respond back.
- Mental health. I promise you, everything is easier when you can get up in the morning without anxiety descending on you or sadness holding you down. Don't pride yourself on being high-functioning depressed – it's really ok sometimes to let yourself not function. Feelings are meant to be felt (another gem of wisdom from your magical therapist), so let the sadness in when it comes. You still need convincing, even now, but the truth is that you will be ok if you miss that meeting or drop that extra curricular – you can just be happy without needing to achieve so much.
I'll leave you here to continue your adventure. A little sneak preview: you're about to buy a purple pennyboard which you ride obsessively, dye your hair blonde, learn to drink way too much coffee, and end up climbing the most gigantic, pitfall-ridden, beautiful, rewarding mountain of your life. Go and let the world break your heart. I will be, and have always been, here to catch you.
Love,
Amanda
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