Letter to 16-year-old Me

Dear 16 year old Anna,

So you’re in your last year of high school.  Nice job.  Remember when the ceiling fell on your French teacher?  Yeah, she totally deserved that one.  So, you’re probably sitting at your computer, playing minesweeper or something.  I seriously can’t remember what was on the Internet 7 years ago… were we on dial up? Was YouTube a thing?  Napster? Anyway, I won’t keep you, I know you have to go make mix CDs composed of whatever you can find on the Internet for free and like four Rage Against the Machine songs your brother put on there.  Anyway, here’s what I got for you:

You don’t like Rage Against the Machine.  Stop it.

You still don’t have your license.  Sorry.  Driving’s hard and you’re not good at it.

You have braces.  They come off.  Stop whining about it.  Also, your teeth are really smooth, and eating apples is great again.

Your life starts after you graduate high school.  High school is so not real it’s insane.  The people you hated in high school are just like, chess pieces put there by… their parents  (do chess pieces of parents? This metaphor took a turn…) to fill up space until you discover that there are literally billions of other people in the world that don’t suck.  *see Kanye West’s “Everything I Am”. 

Soon you will meet the people you will call your friends for most of the rest of your life.  And these people are the best, and you will love them until the sky cries jellybeans.

You’ll learn that you can write.

You’ll develop a true love and deep appreciation for hiphop, but only after you listen to all the happy-sad indie stuff that you yearned to be able to relate to (you never really do).

Hiphop helps a lot.

Most importantly though, things don’t really change much as you get older.  Sorry to break this to you.  You just get better at dealing with everything.  And isn’t that so much better?  What fun is watching everything change around you while you stay the same?

You change and grow into yourself.  You grow into a person and you grow into a woman. You will do things you thought you wouldn’t, and it’s not awful.  You will also not do things you thought you would, which is disappointing.  But you probably should’ve taken a science class or two. 

You get a job and convince your mother you should move out of her house because you’re an adult, kind of.  You have opinions, but you’re still too nervous to voice them around people you don’t really know.  You’re still the quiet one in class.   But I’m not sorry about that.  The shyness thing will probably stay with you for a while, but the people worth knowing will understand.

You will, however, become more sure of yourself.  You’re strong, even though you might not always be in control.  Because you will still get angsty at 3 am and clean your room to give you the illusion that you know what’s going on.

Your friends are important.  They teach you things, and help you understand how you resonate with the rest of the world.  You teach them things, too, even though you don’t think you do.  Do not brush them off.  They care about you and you care about them and you all need each other because no one has any fucking clue what’s going on.

You will think your attractive on some days, instead of the usual none.  You will notice when a boy looks at you.  You’re not a size 2 anymore.  Not sorry about that.  The development of your curves is a slow, awkward, but ultimately fantastic progression.

I’m almost 23 now, but I’m still 16.  I’m still weird, but I own my weirdness like a pro, but most importantly, I’m still you.  Also, when I’m 30, maybe I’ll write a letter to 23 year old me, but I’ll still be you.  You have Professor Rozahegy to thank for that.  He’s adorable and wise and he will change your life and pay attention to him, okay.  He’s, like, 45% responsible for this letter being written.  Also, as much as I’d like to think I’m a completely different person, a large part of me will always be 16. 

So here’s to you past-present-future me.  Way to keep dealing with stuff, and making things more complex than they are, but still understanding that it’s probably better than giving zero value to anything at all. 

Also, this is only 7 years into the future, and the world is still nothing like the Jetson’s.  We’re still on Montreal, and constructions still really slow.  Sorry.