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Dear Young Phoebe Fay,
Surprise! It's me. Or rather, it's you. Your 41-year-old self writing to you from 2007.
First things first. It's 1979 for you, and you are in junior high hell. Don't worry. This is the low point, and it really does get better in high school. Your two front teeth will grow together, and the mess that is your skin will clear up (mostly). In fact, you'll wind up quite pretty. You won't believe that for a long time, but it's true.
Next year, mom and dad will send you to a Catholic girls' high school. You'll fight them tooth and nail, convinced that teen years with ugly uniforms and without boys will be unbearable. Get over it. They win, and it turns out to be the best thing for you. You will blossom in high school, and you will make friends you will keep for life. You will even survive the uniforms and come to appreciate them when you oversleep and have to be dressed and ready in three minutes. They will, however, remain hideous, and after graduation, you will never wear a yellow blouse again.
You're going to make a lot of mistakes in your life, some small, some big, and one huge. I would like to give you a list of things to do differently, but it wouldn't do any good. Even if this could reach you across time, you're me. You don't do anything just because somebody told you to. You learn your lessons the hard way every time.
You'll do a lot of fun things in your life, have many adventures. You'll have a blast in college (but you'll wish you'd ignored the arguments for a "practical" major - you should have gone for English lit).
You'll visit Colorado in a few years and fall head over heels in love with the state. You'll make it your home in 1989.
During most of the '90s, you'll be almost insufferably cocky. You might want to slap yourself upside the head every now and then during these years, just in case you can knock some sense into us.
In your thirties, you're going to pass through darkness. You're going to lose hope, and your heart will be broken in a hundred ways. You will fail. You will think that you can't possibly survive all this loss and failure, but you will always survive.
You will learn that you have strength at your core. You will learn that strength doesn't come from what you have or what you know or from any other person. That strength is you, pure and eternal, and no one can take it from you.
You will learn that a heart can be broken and healed as many times as you will allow it to be.
Most importantly, you will learn compassion. You will learn to be gentle with yourself and others. You will learn the importance of kindness and forgiveness.
Your life at 41 doesn't look like you've imagined so far, but it has love and family and beauty and infinite possibilities. I can't tell you where it might go from here. I'm still waiting on word from our 69-year-old self to fill in the details.
Love,
Me
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Again, opinions and ideas here are solely those of the writer and not of Third Option Media. Contact the writer if you are interested in discussing this article