Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (43 page)

Jo Whittemore

Dear Teen Me,

Right now you’re dabbing on Charlie perfume and hiking your jeans
all
the way up—only inches away from camel-toe status. You’re smart enough,
thank God
¸ to know that camel toe isn’t sexy, but for some reason you think that supertight jeans are. Never mind that your pockets can’t hold anything thicker than a stick of gum or that your legs hurt when you sit down.

You think you’re sexy. And we can blame Janet Jackson for that.

She’s all the rage at the moment, with “Rhythm Nation” and “Black Cat” topping the charts, and her music videos are hot. She’s
sexy
, and you want to be sexy, too.

This means lace-up boots, tight clothes, and killer dance moves. Your specialty? The box step. You even diagrammed the moves, because nothing says “take me now” like drawings of feet and arrows. Unfortunately, you won’t learn until years later that the box step is for ballroom dancing, but it explains why people at prom thought you were a complete dork. (There’s now a reality show that makes ballroom dancing cool. You were simply ahead of your time.)

Looking back, I cringe at the other ways you’ll try to be sexy: practicing a sultry lip bite (with buck teeth, you resemble a rabbit), hitting guys playfully on the shoulder (you hit harder than you think), and crossing your legs slowly à la
Basic Instinct
(you look like you have pelvic arthritis).

At one point, you’ll even make sexy eating noises because you saw a woman do it in a yogurt commercial. The guy you’re dating will laugh—
hard—
and ask why you’re trying to be sexy with a rotisserie chicken. Even though he turns out to be a douchebag, he was right about the chicken. Don’t eat poultry like that.

Then a strange thing will happen. You’ll give up trying to be sexy, because the attitude that goes with it just isn’t you. And you’ll miss being able to carry stuff in your pockets.

This attitude shift makes me proud.

What doesn’t make me proud is how far in the
opposite
direction you’ll go, with hoodies and backward ball caps, like you’re gangsta for life.

“Why bother at all?” you’ll think. “Nobody will ever find me sexy.”

And it’s just not true.

Once your best friend convinces you to throw away the ball cap and brush your hair, you’ll discover a happy medium. You’ll grow more comfortable in your own skin and start showing your sense of humor. Clever one-liners will be your way to break the ice with strangers. Funny anecdotes about your past will turn these strangers into friends.

And guys will start to notice you more.

Because, apparently, humor is also sexy. A girl who can laugh at her own shortcomings and be herself is just as hot as one who can synchronize her arm and leg movements.

In fact, there are all kinds of sexy: smart, funny, sporty, tough…

And it fits all sizes, all shapes. Sexy is
you
, the real you. Why be anyone else?

Plus, in ten years, Janet Jackson shows her boob at the Super Bowl. Do you really want that much exposure?

Sara Zarr

Dear Teen Me,

So you learned how to make friendship bracelets. Cool. They’re very cute, and making them will keep your hands busy during those late-night babysitting gigs when the only other option is raiding the fridge. (Speaking of Things to Do While Babysitting, please stop watching movies like
Poltergeist
and
The Amityville Horror
when you’re alone in a dark house! Just because this family has HBO doesn’t mean you have to watch it.)

I just want you to think about this: What is a friend?

It can be hard to know sometimes. The nature of friendship changes as you move toward adulthood.

Childhood friendships were often based on proximity, what you like to do for fun, how your moms feel about each other. Don’t get me wrong—a couple of those childhood friendships were great, memorable, so much fun, and so important. Rachel, for example. And of course Christine, who you’ll still be in touch with when you’re forty—and even though you aren’t best, best friends like you were in childhood, it feels so good to still be known by someone who knew you when you were four.

As you get older, what you’re really looking for is someone who understands you, with whom you feel a flash of recognition and a sense of home. And Sara? I’m going to tell you this, and it’s not a criticism: You are not a person who is easily understood—by yourself or by others. But being understood matters enough to you that you’ll go through a lot of pain and work to know yourself, and you’ll make some missteps in your efforts to be known by others.

I’m not going to tell you about those missteps, though, or warn you against them. Each misstep shows you something about yourself that you needed to know, and refines your vision of what you want in a friend, which brings you closer to finding those people, that person.

As for what makes a friend, there’s no ultimate definition. Friendships come in a lot of shapes and sizes. There are friends that are perfect for eating lunch
with, friends you meet in a mutual endeavor—like at work or in theater or music—friends to party and play with, friends who are good companions on road trips. The longevity of these types of friendships tends to be limited by their context, but there’s no shame or failure in that.

If there is any definition of a True Friend, maybe it’s this: a person who understands the kind of person you want to be, and whose words and actions toward you are always guided by that understanding.

I do want to tell you what a friend isn’t, though I know you’re going to have to do the work of figuring this out on your own: A friend isn’t a person whose attention and approval you depend on to feel okay about yourself.

This is a hard one to work out. Because Dad rejected you—not outright, not intentionally, but through neglect and the effects of alcoholism—some injured part of you is always going to be looking for someone (usually a man but not always) to make you feel okay. Even if everyone in the world tells you that
you’re okay
(and you are going to have a great career that earns you a lot of attention and approval), sometimes it’s not going to feel like enough.

This is going to lead to pain.

I sort of wish I could save you from that pain, but to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the pain now is part of the joy later. And there’s going to be joy, too, in the very midst of pain, because you are going to be blessed with a number of very meaningful friendships—some of which began from that place of needing approval but then grew beyond that and became real.

However, not all of them are lasting, and even though you’ll think you’re going to die when some of those friendships come to an end, you won’t. You’ll come out alive, stronger, better for the years that you had together, full of self-knowledge you wouldn’t have discovered any other way. And self-knowledge is going to be really important for the work that you’ll end up doing.

No, I can’t save you from pain. But maybe you could at least think about these words from Naomi Shihab Nye when you’re trying to discern who to share yourself with:

You Have to Be Careful.
You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.