Thursday 10 January 2013

A letter to my future self.

Dear Mollie,

I am writing to remind you of your teenage years and to hope, oh so desperately hope, that life has become a little bit easier. Because although your life is happy and fun at this time there are many, many things to be worrying about. And worry you do well.

I don't know if you remember, but at this time in your life the future seems a very long and very unlikely place to imagine. There is still a multitude of public examinations to get through before even thinking of university or anything remotely interesting and cool. Seeing past these exams and into a life where everyday is not plagued with homework or revision or the tense feeling of knowing that hard work is ahead is extremely difficult. Therefore, at this moment any life that involves any of my wildest hopes and dreams is a far, far away idea that I can only wish very hard for. I feel as if, at this point, the best job I could ever have is working in Waitrose. Not even a super indie and cool job as a waitress in Harris & Hoole down the road is an option right now, because not only are you not old enough but you are certain that with your luck they will not deem you hipster enough to work there.  Not hipster enough. Imagine that. I don't know what is scarier, that you actually day dream about wearing indie clothing and serving fabulous coffees to customers with leather messenger bags and MacBooks and brown, expensive brogues, or the knowledge that no one will even employ you to babysit.
I sincerely hope, therefore, that you are not still waiting for mothers to call and ask you to look after their children but are working with some brilliantly cool people writing excellently quirky and intelligent things. Any things.

On a more trivial note, I also want to remind you that as a fifteen year old girl most boys seem to be irritatingly uninterested. Fortunately, however, you have no interest in these male peers either because the overwhelming majority of them are lanky, spotty, awkward, immature, and hopelessly tragic. Please, future self, do tell me that by the time these boys grow up they improve at least slightly. And please say that you eventually get past the stage of only being able to be the token girl holding hands with a boy who still watches Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and relates every part of his life to COD. It would be disastrous if in the future you still settled under the category of singletons because of your uneventful teen years.

Oh, future Mollie, I just desperately wish that your life is a little simpler now you've become a fully grown, fully functioning adult. That you do not cry at everything remotely happy or sad because of your fragile hormonal state. That you have your own income and finally understand what a mortgage is. That you have seen a lot of the world, all of the cities you've always longed to go to. That you adore whatever career you have, and you achieved what you wished for now. That you speak fluent French, and maybe even live in Paris. That you wear devastatingly cool clothes and navigate around London with such ease like all those beautiful women you saw as a girl. That you have friends who make your stomach ache with laughter.
That you are happy, that you are safe, that you are peaceful. And most importantly, that you have found love. First love, hopeless love, and love everywhere you go.

So, Mollie, I can only hope that how ever bad you feel now or lost or helpless or scared your life in the future is 100 times better. I can only hope that you've worked, at least some things, out and life has begun to make a bit more sense. I can just only hope, for now.

Yours lovingly,

Mollie, aged 15, 1 month and 16 days.

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