LETTER TO MY TEENAGE SELF

YOU’RE about to enter a very peculiar patch in your life chronology. Your teenage-hood will be soiled by confusion, hurt, love and hormonal rage. The teenage years are a quaking effluvia of new feels that will test the patience you have for yourself and the world.

When you get to high school, that will be the first taste of real life – to a certain extent. You will struggle, lose yourself and betray yourself. You will be depressed, even hate learning some days, your skin will break out with pimples in the most awkward places on your face, the very week you had finally psyched yourself up to finally tell your crush how you feel.

You will try and you will fail. They will tease you about your smoky eyes or that you’re soft. But keep at it, you’re a king and that’s the first directive encoded in your DNA, to replicate royalty. Your teenage angst will wear you down and you will find solace in books, music and the imaginings of another world. You will like things you’re embarrassed to tell your friends, because they’ll think you are weird and uncool. Embrace the uncool fast, it’s okay. People resonate with authenticity, so make it easy on yourself and chill out.

Then it gets crazy messy when you fall in love for the first time. There will be searing perplexity, because it will be a foreign feeling. A foreign that feels good. A foreign you have been taught to doubt and question. This love will taint every thought, wet your every word. You will build a shrine to this love and adorn it with every moment spent with your first love.

The walls fortified with your devotion and roofed by the meeting of lips. When the heartbreak storms in, it will destroy your shrine with a burning vengeance, your world will shake, your heart constantly caught in your throat. You will be fine and after a while, you get used to pain. It becomes your muse, your constant companion, an armour you wear with fervent pride. I urge you to free yourself of this mentality, even now at 26, you’re still dealing with it. Stop loving people who will only reinforce your fears of loss and rejection. Society is an external construct, that shouldn’t dictate how you live in your world and space. What matters most is what you think about yourself.

University is when it all gets dizzy, but a necessary dizzy. The lectures will be long and dragging, you will struggle because deep down you know that what you’re studying is not aligned with who you are and who you want to be. But every decision you will appreciate later on. The journey of self-discovery is a never ending one, filled with choices that tell us ‘Wrong Way’.

  Choosing a career path at 18 years old is the biggest sham in the world. Eighteen-year-olds are barely in tune with themselves, now they must make such a serious life decision without a clear awareness of their life goals. We should be asked what we DON’T want to do, that’s always easier to figure out. Therefore, please let’s not force our children to make huge commitments, so young.

You will fall in love once again, but this time it will be different. You will try to fight this love, even deny it to some but they will see right through it because it is clayed all over your face. This time love will never leave your heart, you will find pleasure and gratitude in merely being able to love another human being. That will be enough for you and that will make this love, the love of your life at this point. This will be grown love, where flaws are in the open, perfections are recognised. Yet you will still choose it, for that love will give more to you and your journey than it will snatch from you.

You’re 26 right now and everyday you’re still learning to honour yourself. You have learnt many lessons and continue to do so, but don’t worry it does get better. I’m writing this to you now mainly because I know how hard it is for you to revel in your own magic, but I just want to tell you that loving yourself is a lifetime occupation. Ignoring external voices is something we are continually unlearning.  With time, one just learns to be better at it. It’s one of the many human occupational hazards.

Just remember; always be clear with your intention and the universe will gift you all that you desire.  Stay faithful to yourself, be your own milk and honey in a world of smoke and ashes.

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