A letter from July 24th, 2015

Dear Emma, Happy birthday! Congrats on being 25, I guess that should be cool. I don't know if you remember this, but I'm you, writing an email from July 23rd, 2015... wow, that's 10 years ago for you. Cool. I guess I should start with where I am right now. It's the summer before sophomore year, and not much has happened yet. I went to the shore and Red Bird, next week is GeekyCon, then there's a songwriting intensive and rock ensemble at Architekt. I'm also supposed to be a PA on my friend Tiffany's movie but I'm not positive that'll take off. However, I think that Alexa's movie will work out - it's for multimedia, so she needs to get it done. I'm nervous about acting on camera, but we'll see how it goes. Currently I'm absolutely loving life. I'm dating John Valle, who I think I love but who even knows? My best friend's probably Mel (side note: I love that I have someone to call my best friend again) and we're doing great. Everyone in multimedia's my bud, that's cool. No drugs, no alcohol, no ***, and trying to keep it that way. Kelsey, Kylie, Katie, Ashley, Ethan, Betsy, we're all growing up together... I mean, we've always been growing up together, but now I can tell. It's all so great. Now, plans for the future: how did they pan out? I guess we probably didn't get into Columbia, but I hope we tried. So where'd we go? Boston University? Emerson? What'd we major in? Was it theatre, or something else? And the real big question: what're we doing? Let me tell you how I see my life in the future... I'm living in Greenwich - or at least in New York City - with a boyfriend who I'm convinced is the love of my life and a cat, hopefully more. I have a degree in theatre and am already starting down the stage management road. Maybe I need another job to make ends meet, but I'm definitely on track to a career that I love. I have a lot of super-cool friends and we do super-cool stuff together. And if not, I guess there's always our boyfriend and cat, right? Also, don't let this email throw you into some kind of existential crisis. I know that if this were a movie it definitely would make you reassess your life or something, but don't do that to yourself. If things aren't going the way you thought they would be when you were 15... well I hope we're smart enough not to let that mess us up. Anyway, I have to pee, so I guess I'll wrap up this email. Keep doing whatever you're doing and whatever. Don't do meth or heroine, and if some new worse superdrug has been invented, don't do that either. Oh, and I hope we finally got ourselves a hoverboard! All my love and well wishes, Emma, age 15 A quote from Betsy that she wanted me to add: "Betsy really loves you and I'm sorry if I did anything bad but I really do love you, so much"