Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (2 page)

Asking John O’Bleary to the Sadie Hawkins dance was about so much more than getting rejected by the boy of your dreams; it was about setting the pace for the rest of your life. You already believe in something Faith will say on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
: “Want, take, have!” And while you’re not going to use this for evil quite the way she did, you’re going to wear your heart on your sleeve and pursue impossible goals and take inadvisable risks. Because it’s the only way you know how to be you.

But I think you’ve already got a sense of this—even on bad days, when you feel like you have eighty R’s on your forehead (like the day when you realize that, whoa, there’s no cure for bipolar disorder; or all the times when you want to hide until school, and your parents, and the mean girls disappear). Pretty soon you’re going to realize that “It works if you work it” is more than a Taylor Hawkins quote (from that new magazine
Nylon
). “It works if you work it” are words to live by, and you’re already on top of it. So don’t change a damn thing.

^*
Name not-so-elusively changed to protect the bashful.

Jessica Lee Anderson

Dear Teen Me,

It’s your senior year of high school, 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night. There’s a huge football game happening right now and parties are just getting started. Sadly, you’re in bed. Not because you have some illness or because you’re nursing a hangover or anything like that (though be warned: you will soon suffer the worst hangover of your life). You’re just exhausted. So very, very exhausted.

You’ve been averaging about five hours of sleep per night—actually less with midterms and the SAT looming. Plus, you have a ton of other projects due, like that student council environmental proposal you grudgingly signed up for because it was going to look good on your college and scholarship applications. To date, you’ve filled out twenty-nine applications. You’re
desperate
. You want to go away to college badly, but support and finances are limited. These obstacles make you even more obsessed.

In addition, you feel shattered after finding out that your boyfriend and best friend have started seeing each other behind your back. Yes, you’ve been crazy busy, but this is inexcusable. The betrayal makes you feel even more exhausted. Before crawling into bed, you thought about calling someone to confide in, but who would you call? Some people at school consider you “popular,” but they don’t know the real you. They only know the people-pleasing Jessica—the one who wishes everyone would like her.

You just want to hibernate until graduation. And while you don’t physically slow down, your spirit seems to withdraw as time progresses. Days blur together from so many simultaneous responsibilities—projects, quizzes, finals, additional applications, club meetings, volunteering opportunities, etc. Plus you have to take the ACT because you choked during the SAT. Despite your ongoing exhaustion, you manage to attend a few parties and football games, but you continue with the people-pleasing façade. You let your guard down with that cute guy from advisory, but then you try to distance yourself emotionally because dating someone now isn’t part of your plan.

Amazingly, the college acceptances start rolling in, and you receive quite a few scholarships. You’re elated—you’ve accomplished the seemingly
impossible! This amazing feeling is temporary, though, and the desperation doesn’t dissipate. If anything, you put more pressure on yourself as you prepare for college and your future. I wish that your adult self—me—could intervene and tell you that it’s not right to make success your god. Unfortunately, it takes a breakdown before you’ll be able to realize this.

You sign up for eighteen hours of classes during your first semester at college, plus join a couple of clubs and take on a part-time job. This is more than you can handle, and you’re near the point of flipping out. So when you get an opportunity to party in Mexico with some new friends, you’re all for a chance to escape. With each sip from a bottle of gin, you feel layers of your veneer cracking, and your anxiety lessening. Losing control feels good—until you completely lose it.

Let me just say that there’s nothing like a police-escorted trip to the hospital to make you rethink your priorities. You will recover from this worst hangover of your life, and your soul will start to heal too (albeit a bit more slowly than your black eye). While there are many things you can control, you need to learn to let go in more appropriate ways. Try losing yourself on long hikes, or while writing.

And by the way, that cute guy from advisory? You’ll marry him.