Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (31 page)

Your therapist asks questions you don’t know how to answer. You think maybe turning seventeen will help, and then you turn seventeen and it gets worse and junior year slips through your fingers. You sleep through prom and your best friend’s graduation. You get your lowest GPA ever. It’s unacceptable, because if you don’t get into Brown, you don’t know what you’ll do.

(You get into Brown. After the first month, you’re ready to get the hell out of there. You transfer home to the huge state school you refused to ever apply to. It’s incredible.)

Look.

It’s not normal.

You’re not normal.

And I know that if I were there really sitting in the car next to you, and you heard these words—words that everyone else in the world would probably think are horrible—you would latch onto them. Because
yes,
I understand. You are not overreacting and you are not imagining that things really are unfathomably difficult, and you are so not alone.

It really should not be this hard to get out of bed. You really should not be
that
angry
all
the time. It’s not hormones and it’s not a phase, and
I believe you
,
and you should have actually talked to that therapist and reached out and gotten the help you needed a long time ago, because you’re going to keep doing this for
years
, and it just does not have to be this hard.

“Suffering for your art” is just a pretty phrase people say, okay?

But you’re not going to listen, and you’re going to keep doing this to yourself for a long time.

You’ll probably be surprised at what fixes itself when you get better. Things that seem irreparably broken now, like your relationship with your mom? You two are going to have an amazing relationship. Your best friend who’s doing even worse than you are? She’s okay now, too.

Those songs you listened to while you drove to therapy and out for coffee with boys or around your neighborhood and thought about food the entire way every time? Those songs are eating disorder songs and will be until the day you die. You broke those songs.

But it’s okay. Because here I am, as better as it really gets, listening to those songs and remembering you.

What’s funny is that I can’t write a good story that’s in any way related to your eating disorder. I’ve tried, believe me, because everyone’s always telling me to write what I know, but the truth is, your ED ruined that story for me, because now it’s full of details that aren’t important and don’t make any larger sense, and they’re clogging up the big picture and I’m so filled with shame when I try to type that I can’t ever make it sound real. You took that story off the table. It’s the same reason that when you wanted to write a book with self-injury, you had to have the kid break his bones, because you took all the normal stuff off the table, didn’t you? You stole the stories. You keep stealing stories.

Stop. Leave me something to work with. Don’t make me try to make art out of your suffering. It doesn’t work.

Get better.

Get better.

Get better.

And get a fucking move on, because I have all these books to write and you need to not use up any more stories because I’m bad enough at coming up with ideas as it is, okay?

Go make up new stories and live things that are too beautiful and unreal and stupid and happy to make their way into books.

I’ll be here.

Jenny Moss

Dear Teen Me,

It’s your senior year.

You’re in English class, at a desk in the back corner of the room, with a point to make about Hester Prynne in
The Scarlet Letter
, but your teacher turns away, her wiry black and silver hair shaking, as she laughs with the cheerleaders and student council members, and you want…What?…What is it you want?

I see your confusion. You’re so distracted by those around you that you don’t know what you want.

So listen to me for a moment.

Think of your wildest dreams.

Talking with Hemingway and Fitzgerald about art, life, and
things that matter
until late into the night at a smoky Parisian bistro…

Catching a glimpse of a nervous Shakespeare gathering his actors before they take the stage in the court of Elizabeth I…

Laughing at Dorothy Parker’s quips at the Algonquin…

Those might not be possible. Try again.

Studying literature at a centuries-old university…

Writing in longhand at a French café…

Watching the Tuscan countryside roll by, with your backpack at your side and your journal in your lap…

Grab hold of those dreams.

Put aside your need to do the practical thing. Research far-flung colleges. Find a guidance counselor. Dream more, dream bigger, dream wilder.

Ask: “What do
I
want?
What
do I want? What do I
want
?”

Read. (Wait—you already do that.) Read more. Keep reading.

Seek advice. Think. Listen.

Understand that what works for someone else might not work for you. (Example: those red Coca-Cola pants and top your mother thought would look great on you.)

Understand that not everyone sees the world as you do. (Example: Not everyone hears beauty and mystery and magic when Bob Dylan sings.)

Understand that there are other paths. (Example: Studying physics at a college an hour from your house is just one choice.)

Be patient, but act. Sometimes the worst decision is no decision.

Make mistakes. Change your mind. It’ll be okay.

Remember: Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness is your greatest strength. Things will make more sense if you can come to terms with that.

Your dreams? Remember those? Are you still holding on?

So…ignore that English teacher who loves only the popular kids. You have a future she won’t be a part of. Ignore those girls who are laughing at you now. You have more important things to think about. Instead, listen to the voice inside of you, the one saying,
I want to be part of the conversation
.

Keep writing in private. You’re getting better.

Keep doing math. You love it.

Keep singing in the church choir. You may be tone-deaf, but God hears you perfectly.

Consider the following: You
can
be in a Montparnasse café or at the Algonquin Hotel on a 1920s evening, and you can talk to anyone you want about anything you want….

If that’s what you really want, find a way.