Hi 16 year old me.\u00a0 It’s 51 year old me.<\/p>\n
I’m writing you to tell you not to give up.<\/p>\n
I know things REALLY suck right now.\u00a0 You’re getting bullied as school.\u00a0 You don’t know where you want to go to college.\u00a0 Your best friend seems to hate you half the time.\u00a0 You feel like you are all alone and no one will ever understand you.\u00a0 You are 100% sure no boy will ever like you.\u00a0 You’ve contemplated ending it all a few times and even tried once.<\/p>\n
I’m here to tell you it gets better.\u00a0 A lot better!\u00a0 Yes really!<\/p>\n
By the time you graduate from high school you will discover that you CAN talk to strangers and you can make friends.\u00a0 You will start to get a little self confidence.\u00a0 You will even have a couple boyfriends!<\/p>\n
In your twenties you will fall deeply in love and find an amazing friend group of fellow dorks\/ nerds that allow you to feel comfortable being yourself for the first time.\u00a0 You will get married, graduate from college and get a really good job.\u00a0 You get diagnosed with anxiety and depression disorders and feel AMAZING for maybe the first time in your life once you get a treatment plan.\u00a0 There will be some struggles- not going to lie- but you come out the other side stronger than ever.\u00a0 You finally get to see Bon Jovi in concert!\u00a0 More than once!<\/p>\n
In your thirties you finally pay off your student loans- yay!\u00a0 You also get married again, move to Iowa, and get hired by a great company with great coworkers who will become friends.\u00a0 You get to be an aunt too! You will love meeting your nephew.\u00a0 You pick up the clarinet again.\u00a0 You go to more Bon Jovi concerts.<\/p>\n
In your forties you get to meet your niece.\u00a0 You finally upgrade to a decent car and wonder why that took you so long.\u00a0 You wind up in therapy again, but it’s so worth it.\u00a0 You make peace with a lot of mistakes you made when you were younger and appreciate the lessons you learned from them.\u00a0 You celebrate 10 years of marriage to your best friend.\u00a0 You go to more Bon Jovi concerts.<\/p>\n
I don’t know yet what our fifties will look like, but if the past couple decades are any indication we are in for a lot of great things!\u00a0 And yes, we’ve already seen Bon Jovi once this decade too.<\/p>\n
I wish I could hug you.\u00a0 I wish I could tell you all the things about you that are amazing and special that you don’t see right now.\u00a0 \u00a0I wish I could show you how great things will be for your sooner than later.\u00a0 Just know that I love you and you are so much stronger than you think you are.<\/p>\n
And fun fact-\u00a0 Jon Bon Jovi is just as hot now as he was then.\u00a0 In fact- I think he’s even hotter now!\u00a0 So you have lots to look forward to \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi 16 year old me.\u00a0 It’s 51 year old me. I’m writing you to tell you not to give up. I know things REALLY suck right now.\u00a0 You’re getting bullied as school.\u00a0 You don’t know where you want to go to college.\u00a0 Your best friend seems to hate you half the time.\u00a0 You feel like you are all alone and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,27,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-its-all-love","category-myself"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qtq80-x44z1P.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}