A letter from May 18th, 2021

Dear Myself from 4 Years Ago, Contrary to your belief, high school does fly by really fast. I only have a week left until my last day of high school and I turn 18 on the same day. It feels like last year I was just leaving middle school with my friends. It's funny, everybody says middle school is when you lose all your friends. It’s actually in high school when that happens because of the fact that you find yourself a lot more. You discover things you don't want to discover. You become more honest with yourself than you have ever wanted to be. Don't be scared, I know you are. Not one person you were friends with in 8th grade is your friend as a senior. You don't know how to be independent yet. You don't know how to be alone. It's okay to be alone and it's nothing to be scared of. Stop being so invested in people who make you feel like actual ****. You have a lot of time left, contrary to another popular belief of yours. They will come. The universe has a plan for you, I promise. Stop being so impatient. There's only so much I can give you advice on, healing is a slow process and it's not linear. I am better than I was. We were. The habits you taught yourself in middle school still haunt me to this day and I'm a person of habit. I wish you had never learned them, but they made me who I am today and who we will be in the future. You're scared. I'm scared. I still have a lot of learning left to do that has barely even started. I can tell you that you meet a few amazing people you’ll remember for the rest of your days already and at the moment you’ve met a girl that literally stole your heart. I didn’t see it going this far, but I already know that I want her by my side until I die and it's not like him. How he treats you in the coming years is not love. She makes you feel heard, welcomed, loved and wanted. We have incredible potential with her if we do this right. I have hope we will. When you lose him, you will lose your sister. She will abandon you. You will feel like your whole world has fallen apart. I guess it did. You can rebuild it better than it was before though, you can rebuild it into a world that treats you like you deserve. I think I'm excited to see what advice I'll be able to give myself in 4 years. May 18th 2021 426pm