A Letter to my Younger Self

Browsing Instagram, I saw a post that read, “If you could write a letter to your younger self, what would you say?”  That really got me thinking.  All throughout my life, I’ve made it a point to never forget my former self, to remember her hopes and dreams, and to hopefully never disappoint her.  I want to be the person that she wanted to be.  I know I’m not where she thought I would be, but I also like to think she’d be proud of me.  This is my letter to her.

Dear Jackie (or Jacqueline… I’m not sure if you’re still in that phase or not),

I hope you’re doing okay.  I hope you’re happy.  If you’re still in elementary school, I know you’re not.  I know you think you’re too tall, too fat.  You don’t like the fact that you’re ten years old and people think you’re in your late teens.  You don’t like your hair or your glasses or your crooked teeth.  You don’t have a lot of friends because you’re always off in your own head.  You’re different and you don’t know why.

I’m writing to you today to reassure you and to prepare you for the days to come.

First of all, life is going to get better for you.  In fact, it’s going to be awesome.  Your high school years are amazing, and you’re going to meet your best friends in the world, the friends who are going to be with you for the rest of your life.  They’re amazing.  I can’t wait for you to meet them.  You’re going to meet some boys, too.  They’re super cute, but don’t lose your head over them.  High school crushes don’t last.  Stay focused on your dreams and your goals.

I do have to warn you, not all of your dreams are going to come true.  And that’s okay.  Yes, you will be devastated, but you’ll eventually learn that everything that happens happens for a reason.  You have so many wonderful opportunities and adventures waiting for you, I’m actually a little jealous.  And you’ve found new dreams, dreams that suit you perfectly.  You’re going to chase them, and I hope you keep chasing them.  I know I’m doing my best!

Unfortunately, your days are not all going to be smooth sailing.  High school is awesome, but you have a lot of hard times waiting for you and your family.  They will make you question everything you believe, and the after-effects are going to stay with you long after everything has passed.  But these times will also help you to find your way, and you’ll discover a strength that you never knew you had.  Be patient and remember that everything has a purpose.  And try to forgive.  It’s something I still struggle with, but I know that your heart is still very open to the innate goodness in people.  I’m sorry to say that’s something I’ve lost over the years.  Maybe you can help me to get it back.

I know I’m making it seem like you and I have nothing in common, but that’s not true.  I still love all things ocean and yes, I’m still obsessed with Disney Princesses.  But I’ve also grown in ways that I’m sure you never expected.  For example, I have a tattoo.  I know you think they’re totally taboo and would never in your wildest dreams see yourself getting one, but trust me, you’ll love them.  You’re also going to learn to love your hair, once you figure out how to work with it.  You’re going to spend three summers working at a summer camp (you definitely didn’t see that one coming).  I also know you have that weird thing against popular music?  I still don’t really understand that one, but you get over it really fast.  Granted, a lot of what’s popular today is really stupid, but there is some good stuff out there.  Don’t worry.  You’re a smart kid.  You’ll figure it out.

That’s something I really want you to know.  You are smart.  I know you don’t think you are because you haven’t quite figured out how to pay attention in class and you get nervous taking tests, but you are smart.  It comes as a surprise, not only to you, but to everyone around you, because let’s face it, you’re kind of goofy (and I say that with love), but you are.  Please promise me you’ll remember that.

Unfortunately, you’re going to struggle with self-esteem issues all your life.  High school is fine, but college and grad school get a little rough.  I can’t tell you why.  I can only tell you that I’m finally beginning to overcome them.  Hang in there, and don’t let self-doubt or self-image get you down.  You are worth so much more than you think you are.

I know this is getting far too serious, but there are still things I feel I should warn you about.  First of all, don’t take Calculus.  Just don’t even bother.  You won’t understand a bit of it, and it will end up being the only C you’ll ever get in your life.  Second, do not, I repeat, do NOT drive in ice.  You will total your car.  Trust me.  Third, getting your wisdom teeth out is going to be the worst physical experience of your life.  Brace yourself.  It’s truly horrible.

Finally, I wanted to tell you that I’ve been doing a lot of digging into our ancestry and family history.  I want you to know that you were right.  You are descended from Kings and Queens of Ireland, Scotland, England, Denmark, Sweden, France, and even Jerusalem.  You are, in fact, a Princess.  Trust me, I’m just as excited about it as you are.  That’s definitely something I haven’t grown out of.

I know this is getting kind of long, so I’ll let you go.  I just wanted you to know that everything is going to work out for the better.  There will be times you don’t think it will.  You’re gong to feel lost, abandoned, hopeless, scared, small, even worthless.  But you’re also going to experience tremendous joy, excitement, love, achievement, adventure, creativity, discovery, and hilarity.  And those times far outweigh the heavy and the negative.

Keep dreaming, keep believing, and be yourself.  It will all be worth it in the end.

Love,

Your 26-Year-Old Self

How Not to be Cool

Recently, I’ve received a lot of sweet and encouraging words about my posts.  My favorite messages are the ones that say that I make them laugh.  I love being told that I’m funny, mostly because in person, my sense of humor can be really awkward.  I always think I’m hilarious, and people do end up laughing at me, but it’s usually because I’m being inadvertently funny while trying to be funny in a totally different, cool-person way.  I’ve finally come to accept, however, that that’s just never going to happen.

I’ve never been very good at hiding my true nature.  Trust me, I try.  Even when I was little, I tried to make everyone think I was cool and adorable.

But the truth is I was crazy… and a little gross.

So, instead of telling you stories about how awesome and cool I am, I’ve decided to share a few stories that are actually true.  And hopefully funny.

One of my mom’s favorite stories is the time she caught flipping the bird at the Easter Bunny.  Let me just say right now that I was three years old and I did not know what I was doing.  A few days earlier, I had gotten my middle finger stuck in our screen door.  That was apparently the scariest moment of my little life up until that point because I still remember it.  I thought I was going to be stuck in that door forever and they were going to have to chop my finger off.

Anyway, later that week, my mom and my grandma took me to see the Easter Bunny.  I’m sure Mom and Mimi were really enjoying their day until they paid for the pictures and turned around to see me, standing right in front of the rabbit, and about ten other kids waiting to get their pictures taken, and shooting him The Finger.

“JACKIE!  What are you DOING?!” my mom screamed.

“Showing him my hurt finger.”  Duh, Mom.

At that point, my mom walked right up to that poor fellow in the rabbit costume and explained, with a distinct emphasis on every word, “SHE’S SHOWING YOU HER HURT FINGER.”

The rabbit just nodded, bobbing his head up and down.  Good thing it didn’t fall off.  That could have been even more traumatizing than the little kid with hobbit hair making rude hand gestures in the middle of the mall.

Sadly, I don’t have a picture of that day, but I do have a picture of the day I met Roger Rabbit.  I was terrified of his movie as a kid, so I have no idea why my parents thought I wanted to meet him.

Clearly, I am not happy.

Speaking of things that scared me, nothing in my entire life, not even my intense fear of zombies, compares to the day I realized what it really meant to be afraid of something.  To be honest, I still feel really guilty about it, because it stemmed from a really sweet gesture.  Around the same time that I flipped off the Easter Bunny, my dad bought me E.T. the Extraterrestrial on VHS.  That night, we all gathered around the television, turned off the lights, and played the movie.

I didn’t last five minutes.  As soon as I saw E.T.’s creepy little silhouette running through the grass, I was done.  I was so scared that I started bawling and my parents quickly turned the movie off.  Now that I think about it, I think I had the same reaction to The Wicked Witch of the West, but my fear of her was nothing compared to the sense of sheer terror that E.T. ignited in me.  My fear of him lasted for a ridiculously long time.  I even had my dad go back and make sure he wasn’t hiding in my room after my cousin showed me a picture of him when I was nine.

I didn’t try watching E.T. again until the restored version was released on DVD, and I am proud to announce that I am no longer scared of him.  I think the new CGI effects had a lot to do with that, as I’m still not overly fond of the puppet.

Confession: Although I have successfully overcome my E.T. phobia, I’m still not okay with Yoda.  Creepy little puppet, he is.

Along with being a little wuss who was scared of absolutely everything, I was also remarkably dumb.  Although I do not blame my exposure to Disney for unrealistic expectations in men, I do blame them for misleading me on what should have never even been up for discussion.

For example, thanks to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, I truly and honestly believed that diamonds and rubies and sapphires came out of the ground looking beautiful and sparkly.

I can’t even tell you how long it took me to figure out that real diamonds do not look like this.  I actually think I was in college before it finally hit me that Snow White totally lied to me.  I don’t know why it took me so long.  Granted, it’s not something that I think about very often.  I just remembering being in a shop and I saw a garnet rock, the way it actually looks before it’s cut down into the diamond shape, and thinking, “Huh… that’s a funny looking garn… OH MY GOD.”

Dumb.  Kid.

The other example I have of my sweet and simple trusting nature (at least when it comes to Disney movies) stems from my repeated viewing of The Lion King when I was six years old.  My took me to see that movie at least five or six times because my grandma was really sick and my mom was pregnant with my sister, so he got to entertain me.

After one such viewing, we were driving (I think to the supermarket), and I was looking at my new Lion King trading cards (all of which I still have).  I found one with a photograph of a warthog.

“Look!  It’s Pumbaa!”  I showed him.

“It is!  You better not call him a pig or else he might charge you!”

That, of course, was a reference to Pumbaa bowling into those hyenas that called him a pig, but as a young and embarrassingly naive little girl, I didn’t realize that.  Thus began the next five years of actually believing that warthogs understood the word “pig.”

When you think about it, it isn’t much of a stretch.  I mean, dogs understand “sit” and “fetch.”  Why couldn’t a warthog understand the word “pig?”  Not that I’d ever get brave enough to actually go up to a warthog and yell “PIG” at him, but still.

Speaking of yelling things at animals, I had a friend who was absolutely convinced that if you yelled at an emu, it would fall over and die.  Fortunately, I never bought into that one.  But the warthog thing?  Oh, that lasted forever.

There I am, watching my Disney and believing every life lesson those characters taught me.  You can tell from the blank look on my face that there is absolutely no brain activity going on in this picture.

So there you have it.  My childhood in a nutshell.  I like to think that today, I’m a little wiser and a little less gullible, but then again, I want to write for a living.  Maybe wisdom and reality are simply beyond my reach.