Dear Self of Selfness Past
As I got home from another maddening day as an untrained, underpaid, sleep-deprived zookeeper (a.k.a, a ninth grade English teacher), I stopped to look at the itty-bitty mirror near my front door. Of course, being that it’s essentially a mirror fit for a Polly Pocket, I have to look super close to see more than just my poorly plucked eyebrow, close enough to see every single one of my cavernous pores. I decided to count them (I got tired after 37), and eventually, I let my mind wander to the question of how I found myself right here, in this moment, as a fully-grown adulty-adult counting her pores in a mirror that could pass as a frisbee for a rat. I thought of all my past selves and what I would tell them to let them know I eventually made it out of childhood discomfiture and teenage obscurity. After (finally) going to the bathroom for the first time since seven AM, I decided I would spend my afternoon doing something productive--negating my bathroom break by guzzling wine and drafting letters full of advice to my past selves to save them from (themselves? Myself? Self-adjacent? The--self of selfness past?).
Dear Kindergarten me,
When the nice boy sees that you're a friendless loser and asks if you want to play a game with him and his friends, do yourself a favor and say "yes" with your words, not "no" by kicking him in the shin.
If you can do that, but not man up when the teacher calls you out in front of the whole class, and instead blubber like a baby, then you are a woefully inconsistent six-year-old.
Also, please note that you're going to move school districts at least three more times, and across the state. I hate to be the one to tell you, but that means you and Brayden are never going to work out. Sorry, kid. Walk it off.
And yes, I know that you're proud to be one of "Ms. Schneider's Spiders” (at least until you got on her shit list for assaulting a classmate); However, you will develop a crippling fear of spiders that spans well into adulthood. You become the drama when mega-spidey drops out of thin air onto your bathroom floor.
AND YOU WILL BE ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED IN YOUR PHOBIA.
Dear middle-school me,
STOP. USING. THE WORD. “RENEGADE”. TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF. You’re on the honor roll and have never snuck out once. You know what renegade means. You’re not that.
Also, it’s super cool that you voted yourself out of your emo friend group “most likely to be the lead singer in a screamo band”. You’re now a bespeckled book loving English teacher with a collection of cardigans. Rock n’ roll!
Dear high-school-fishy me,
I know, I KNOW, you’re tired of brushing your hair. But I implore you, I beg of you- DO NOT GET THAT PIXIE CUT. I know it looks cute on female comic book characters, but please bear in mind they are cartoons intentionally drawn to be attractive, busty, powerful women--and you’re 14 and still only halfway through puberty. You will not look like a bad-ass superhero. You will just look like you’re “confused”.
Also, stay away from Jesse. I know he’s a hot Italian dude with a Spanish last name. I know he’s got pretty, shiny, swooshy hair and an inexplicable ability to grow a five o’clock shadow at the mere age of 15. I know you quite literally want to be “Jesse’s girl”. But, years later, he’ll date this really sweet girl (long after you’ve mostly accepted that he’s just not that into you) and he’ll turn into a total bum with no place or money of his own and mooch off of his girlfriend until she finally decides to dump him like the grubby little trash panda that he is. Do not try to date a moochy Italian trash-panda.
Finally--pay attention to the bathroom signs before you walk in. You’ll thank me later.
Dear junior me,
Yes, I know Veronica is annoying as hell. I know she reminds you of the pretty popular girl from every Netflix movie ever who actually doesn’t have a single thought in her head (I mean, Veronica definitely doesn’t). I know she’s a pick-me with a propensity to hog all of Cameron’s time and yet somehow still find the time to cheat on him anyway. However, it’s not worth it to be angry at him. You’ll regret it in May when he dies in a car accident in Rio Vista. You’ll go from wanting to strangle Veronica until she stops twitching to hugging her often, because she’s broken too.
Dear senior me,
No, Jesse is still not into you. On the bright side, your hair finally grew back out! Then you dyed it fire-truck red, but you looked great. Your parents had no trouble spotting you on the field at graduation. They just looked for the little mermaid after the bippity-boppity-boo and voila: your mom got a blurry, pixelated portrait of you waving at no one in particular like the princesses during the parade at Disney! Also, note that at 22 years old, you’ve still never seen those parades... because you’ve still never been to Disney.
*sigh*
Please, for the love of God- retake your SAT (and maybe crack open a book beforehand this time) so you can apply to A&M right away. Otherwise, you’re going to spend your semester off working 80-hour weeks slinging sandwiches at Chick Fil A just to go to a tiny university six months later in butt-fuck Egypt where the population is so small you’ll finish your first semester swearing you had a moderately attractive stalker. Then, you’ll transfer three times to finally get into A&M and have to pay again and again for official transcripts (which you didn’t save enough chicken slinging money to do). At the height of that absurdly complex process, you’ll have a--mostly respectful--bitch fight with the office lady at Tarleton because their SPEEDY e-transcript system as they call it is less like Speedy Gonzalez and more like Slow-Poke Paco.
Dear college me,
Stop working so damn much and enjoy the ride. Go to parties, make friends, join an organization (just not a cult), and be a real Aggie (even though it’s a cult). You’re gonna miss it one day when you’re that weird random old person at Northgate chasing every *single* vodka red bull with a *double* glass of water, or standing outside the Dixie Chicken hogging the Oxygen because your claustrophobia is *never* prepared for butt-to-back proximity.
Dear 21-year-old me,
Man up and stop worrying about throwing up. When you went to the lake for your birthday, your roommate got hammered, and you were still buzz-less and sunburnt. Pathetic.
When I finished drafting what seemed to be a sufficient number of wine-stained, amateur advice columns for an amateur(er) human being, I decided to call my high school best friend, who was still living in College Station because he was finishing his major in engineering. After informing me that time machines weren’t “actual science", he asked me how much wine I had. I lied.
I got up to look in the mirror again after tripping over an imaginary shoe. Everything that led me here kept running through my head. I may have been a shin-kicking, spider-fearing, pixie-cut wearing, chicken slinging, lightweight former Aggie- but I was proud of myself.
If you’re not familiar with the philosophical point of the “butterfly effect”, it’s the theory that the world is interconnected, so much so that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system. All of those little dorky (and sometimes cool) things I did when I was younger got me my career and the opportunity to shape other young lives. I may want to save them from the same goofy mistakes I made, but the truth? They’re going to make their own goofy mistakes. They’re gonna have their own Jesse’s. They’re going to get their own stupid impulse haircuts, put off school, accidentally walk into the wrong bathroom (we all have), and drunkenly call their friends asking about scientifically unsound machines. And it’s okay. They’ll end up exactly where they’re supposed to be. Just like I did.
I crumbled up the letters and threw them all away. Not because they were wine stained or because time travel is impossible. But because younger me didn’t need help.