Conversations with my 15 year old self

File under: things that probably should've stayed in therapy

Let me set the scene for you for just one moment, it’s the spring of 2006 and you’re a fifteen-year-old girl dealing with her first major heartbreak having broken up with the boy you thought you’d spend forever with. The anger, resentment and utter disappointment that fill your every pore have been disregarded over and over again. You’re young. You don’t know what love is. This will all pass. Eventually, everything will get better.

Then April comes and P!nk (an artist who you have been in love with for a few years now) releases her album I’m Not Dead which for some reason you made the choice to preorder on Apple Music. You fall in love with U + Ur Hand just like every other pissed off girl in school as you very well should. But no other song sticks as hard as Conversations with My 13 Year Old Self.

Self described as a therapy session in a song P!nk says this about the song “I needed a hug, and I get it ... now. If I tried to hug my 13-year-old self, she'd try to kick my ass, and then she'd collapse and cry.” It’s been 18, almost 19, years since the song was released and now, in my thirties, I fully understand exactly why this song has stuck with me for so many years. So here we go….

Dear 15-year-old Laura,

I know you don’t want to have this conversation with anyone and that the last thing you’d be okay with is everyone knowing your dirty laundry. However, I hope that somewhere out there is another teenage girl dealing with similar things that maybe I can prevent from going through the same old things that you did. Know that I am you, 33 turning 34 and still alive and well meaning that you survived it. And, yes, I get it being you it doesn’t feel like you’re going to get through it. But you will and you’ll hate the world for it.

Let’s start with the obvious, I’m 33. Meaning you didn’t die in high school like you thought. You made it past multiple points where your illness should have killed you. And yes, doctors did finally figure out what was wrong with you despite the many, many years of abuse that you suffered at their hands along the way. You’ll be told that you’re insane, you just don’t want to go to school, and it won’t get any better. But eventually this illness will die out with a slow and agonizing whimper leaving behind an adult who has no idea what to do with herself. And unfortunately, I still don’t know what to do with myself. We’ll both get there, slowly.

You do end up married. And you do end up marrying him. You’ll spend most of your life saying that you can’t imagine yourself marrying anyone but him and no one will believe you. You. Are. Young. Live your life until you’re both ready for what is beyond when you both thought your lives would end. It’ll be hard. You’ll date again in high school and break up again. You’ll date again in college, and you will destroy both of you in the breakup that follows. I wish I could say that you both could avoid the heartbreak you will cause each other but you can’t. And you will never wish that you could once it’s all over. You both need these break ups and the heartbreak to grow up.

The doctors will tell you that the treatment you’re about to start taking will make it so that you can’t have children. They’re only half right. You’ll suffer miscarriages throughout your twenties and take that as confirmation that they were 100% right. Then you’ll shock everyone with your first miracle child, and you’ll shock them all again with your second. Don’t ignore the pain that you feel being told it’s not a possibility and don’t ignore the strong urge to want to have children. It’ll happen. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to.

You’ll experience the thing that you are absolutely petrified will happen to you. And I’m sorry I wish I could go back in time every single day to save you from it. But that moment that your worst fear becomes reality will change your entire life both for good and bad. It will destroy you and destroy the trust you put in people, but it’ll heal you in ways that you never thought possible. It’ll be the push that you need to stop the self-harm.

Which, on that topic, your scars will heal and they will eventually fade. Your daughter will ask you what happened to your arms and you’ll lie and lie and lie because the truth is so much worse than any lie could ever be. You’ll fail at killing yourself more times that you can count and for once you’ll be glad that you failed at something in your life. You don’t die young. You’re not meant to. Don’t listen to the girl who tells you that the world is better off without you, she’ll look at you as an adult with a horror that you know means she regrets it. Listen to the boy who takes your hand and counts your scars daily to make sure you’re okay. You’ll hate him now but you’ll thank him daily as an adult. There is no world that is better with you not in it. Just half-complete worlds that have a hole missing that no one can fill. There’s only one you and I know it hurts to think about but you have to grow up. You have to become an adult. You have to become someone more than the fifteen-year-old you.

I love you. I know you can’t imagine a world where you say that to yourself, but I love you more than I love anything. You’re just starting out and you’re just becoming you. You’re the girl I used to be and you’re the girl I know will be strong enough to go through everything.

I love you. I love you. I love you,

You, just 33 and not as pissed off at the world