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The letter below is part of an ongoing series featuring letters from authors to their teen selves. If you're a published author who'd like to participate in this series, we'd love to have you. Just click here and let us know you're interested. Today's guest is Lauren Thoman, author of the recently-released I'll Stop The World.
Dear Lauren,
I've started this letter half a dozen times, and I'm still not sure what I want to say to you.
Part of me wants to reassure you that all those things you're worried about—growing up, moving away from home, finding love, making friends, having kids, figuring out your career—it all works out. Not necessarily in the way you planned, and not simply or easily, but the biggest things you wanted in life, you have them. You fall in love and get married. You become a parent. You find something you are good at and work hard at it to make it into, well, I don't know if I can truly call it a bona fide career yet, but it's at least headed in that general direction.
You've done really well in the friends department, too. I know that is a big concern for you, and that you often worry you don't have much to offer. You wonder why anyone would pick you when everyone else seems to have everything so much more figured out. I know that every time you hear your friends refer to an experience you weren't part of, you secretly fear that it's finally happened, that they've gotten tired of you, that they've moved on.
I'm not going to say you grow out of that—there's a part of you that will always nurse that fear—but you'll learn to manage it. And you will eventually realize that while some relationships will indeed wither up and trail off over time, others will grow and mature along with you. You'll learn to treasure those relationships even more than you do now, because the older you get, the more you'll realize that keeping a relationship alive as an adult takes work, and that the people who stick with you are the ones who have decided that you are worth the effort. And yes, it even includes some of the people you care about right now. Not only do they not tire of you in high school; you're still friends with some of them decades later.
(I know you've heard that most adults lose touch with their friends from high school and college after leaving school, but those adults did not have the technology that you will have, which makes it so much easier to keep in contact. Also, texting will change your entire phone-phobic life.)
Then there's another part of me that wants to warn you about all the hard things that are yet to come, because child, you are not prepared. I want to teach you all of the skills that could make it easier. I want to convince you to let go of all of the lovely fictions you choose to believe, so that you don't suffer so many deep wounds when they finally shatter. I want to give you armor, I want to make you strong, I want to form a shield wall around you and teach you to bare your teeth and scream defiantly at any who would dare to threaten you.
I want to give you the answers to your questions, while also helping you to let go of some of the answers you think you already have. I want to teach you all the things that took me too long to learn, and encourage you to ask questions instead of feeling safe in your certainty. I want to show you that the world is bigger than you can possibly understand. I want to help you see that being smart doesn't mean having all the answers, and that there is no shame in learning something for the first time. You will always be wrong about something, and you will never know everything that you're wrong about, so it's crucial that you always remain open to the possibility that you may have more to learn. I want to dissuade you from making some truly terrible decisions that will have long-lasting consequences, and making mistakes that you will regret forever.
I want to give you a list of every person that's going to hurt you, itemize every lie they will tell and promise they will break so that you can keep your distance and guard your heart. I want to protect you from all the meanness and cruelty in the world, all of the bigotry and hate and superiority and vindictiveness and jealousy and every other horrible thing that people feel and do to one another. I want to protect you from it all, because I wish someone had protected me.
But I can't. When I was you, I would have said that everything happens for a reason, and that I had to go through the hard things for my own good. I don't really believe that anymore (I know, this is unfathomable to you. Get used to it; you'll change your mind on a lot of things. Yes, even that. Yes, that too. Yes, even th—you know what, just assume you'll change your mind on everything. That's probably easier.), but I still can't save you from it.
I can't even tell you you'll get through it, because I'm not sure that "through" is really a thing as long as we're alive. I could list for you all the struggles of my past and tell you that you'll survive them, which is true, at least for now. But we still carry it with us, the good and the bad. I'm not sure any of it is ever truly over. The people, the places, the sorrow, the joy, the triumphs, the failures—they all shape us, constantly, for better and for worse. I can't say you'll get through the hard parts, because there will always be hard parts. The only way to be done with the hard parts is to be done with everything, and we are not done. We still have so much more we want to do.
What I can tell you is that all of the pieces of me came from you. Your laughter, your tears, your hopes, your disappointments. All of the love and excitement, all of the heartbreak and betrayal, all of the broken dreams and hard-won battles, all of the insecurity and anxiety and faith and determination, every bit of the life you have lived and will live has been poured into me. There is no me without you. Not just the easy parts of you, the polished and pretty parts, the parts you don't mind if others see. But all of you. You are crucial to me. There is not a single part of you that is disposable. You are exactly who I need you to be. Which means you are exactly who you need you to be.
I can't prepare you for what's to come. You're going to have to deal with it all on your own. Parts of it will be wonderful. Parts will be horrible. There will be times when you will feel perfectly, deliriously happy, and times when you feel like the whole world is crumbling beneath your feet. Life will be good, and life will be bad, and both will be true, and you will hate that both can be true at the same time, but hating it won't do anything to change it.
What I can give you is this: you will never be alone. You will always have people who you love, and who love you. You will always have someone in your corner, no matter how difficult things get. Try to remember that they're there. The burdens don't feel so heavy when there are more hands to help carry them.
I'll be there too. You won't know it; to you, I'm too far away to even be a flicker in your imagination yet. But I'll be there every step of the way, cheering you on. And when you finally make it to me, I will greet you with open arms, proud of you for all the steps you took to get here. I know they weren't easy, but you took them anyway.
And then? I suppose we will go on together.
Love,
Me
About The Author: Born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Lauren Thoman studied music education, though soon realized that the life of a band director was not for her. She's now a contributor to a variety of top pop culture websites, where she analyzes movies and TV shows. Her debut novel is I'll Stop The World, published by Mindy Kaling and Amazon publishing. Lauren lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee with her family.
