Reminder from your 18 year old self.

Dear FutureMe, So at the moment we are midway through our gap year before we move out of home to the big city and go to university and somehow build something that resembles a life. Last night I was struck by the strangest thought I have ever had while I was watching A Night at the Museum on TV. The kid said to his dad, “What if you’re not great and you just have to get a normal job.” It felt like he was talking through the TV straight to me. What if you’re not great? Now I’m sure that this is a similar feeling to what all eighteen year olds are having right about now. That I’m somehow going to take over the world, or at least change it for the better in some way that I haven’t figured out yet. So in case I have lost this feeling somehow between now and when I get this I want to remind you of the things that we want. I want to be absolutely incredible at law school. Now I know that this will be hard. When I get this I should be at the end of my second year and I know that by then I could be absolutely defeated. There will be people there who are smarter than me, more experienced in Law, richer, prettier and know more words but don’t let that get you down. I know that you are probably huffing at me and telling yourself that you didn’t know anything when you were young, and you’re right. I don’t know much but the one thing that I know better than anyone on the planet is me. And I know that I love a challenge. We are competitive and not easily defeated. So if I am not absolutely incredible at Law school then I want you to study harder and later, sacrifice on the social life, learn bigger words, take extra notes and buy extra books. I don’t care what it takes. We are building a future here and this is the basis for everything. Remember how we didn’t get a better OP than Nicole because we didn’t go that extra mile. That is not going to happen with University! Do it if for no other reason than to be better than your sister! And if we are incredible then I am so proud of myself because I know that nobody thought I could do it so please rub it in their faces. I want to study PR and marketing on the side. Now, if you haven’t started to study this yet hurry up and find a way to do it! I want to live overseas and have 6 boys. Now this is still a little way off but I just wanted to remind you that you never had brothers so six sons would be pretty cool. Be happy. Ok. So maybe I don’t have as many wants as I thought I did once I cancelled out all the ones like “new shoes” and “white skinny jeans”. But my last want, well hope really, is probably the hardest one and it’s something that I haven’t figured out yet but I’m really hoping that by the time you have read this maybe I have. I spend too much time trying to please everyone around me and hoping that it would somehow make me happy. I came to this conclusion by that quote “Love is learning that someone else’s happiness is directly connected to your own.” So if you’re still living by that I want you to stop right now. Because no one else will fight for your own happiness so we’re going to have to start. You do love your mum but you don’t have to do things that make her happy anymore. She may think that what we want won’t work out but we will at least have fun getting to nowhere in particular. I don’t want us to get ever older than what we are and feel bitter towards her because we didn’t follow our dreams from fear of disappointing her. So that’s about all I wanted to say. Besides that 21 sounds so OLD to me right now and I can’t believe that I may one day be 21. It’s so hard to get my head around. From your 18 year old self.