to the 10 year old me with love

To the 10 year old version of myself:

Wow! Right now you are so sure that you will be the best version of yourself that you could ever be.so full of optimism and passion for living life...but at the same time you are so unsure. Pretty soon, you'll buy your first Abercrombie shirt (which you will wear every friday with your Hollister sweat pants!), and you'll basically think you are super cool. But you could be so much cooler if you just did your own thing and didn't worry so much about what other people think. Luckily, you will figure this out eventually. You would be so much happier now if you could just chill out a little bit. For some odd reason, no one ever told you (or more likely you could never understand) that your elementary and even middle school grades count for absolutely nothing, so you will continue to stress way more than you need to in order to reach the perfection you so desperately desire. Please, just relax! Even though you are scared, you'll totally love middle school. It may shock you that you will totally stop being friends with some of your closest pals right now, but as you get older you will realize that the friendships would have come to a natural end anyways. Luckily, you will make many new friends that you really love...You tend to try to make friends with everyone so that you always have someone to talk to. (Yeah, you will still love talking).Now that you are 16 you guys do so many fun things, and best of all, you can drive!!!!It's lovely even though you sometimes have an 11 o'clock curfew. You'll basically always try to make your own fun and you mostly succeed in that aspect. Oh, and how could I forget?! You will FINALLY get rid of those dorky glasses...but surprise!..braces take their place. You will go through a phase where you look and feel really awkward, but luckily you'll look way better than you do now once you get to high school. You'll develop your own sometimes strange fashion style and eventually lose the braces too. You won't totally lose the awkwardness but you will kind of learn to laugh at it. In fact, you will have a million stories about all the silly, super-embarassing things that you did. When these things happen you will basically think that you'll never forget or recover, but I promise you will be just fine. In fact, you'll be more than fine. You will still be silly most of time, and you will maintain that optimistic and peppy attitude. Sometimes it definitely wont be easy to keep that smile though...your family relationships wont really improve...they actually get worse, but you'll learn to just accept that you can't control everything or anyone for that matter. Your feelings of acceptance will give you a sense of closure that will really help you feel happy. You will also (mostly) stay true to your values because you will let yourself be guided by your moral compass. You'll feel proud of yourself for this even thought it will sometimes be difficult for you to decide what the right thing to do is. You'll even pretend you're a rebel once in a while, just to try it out, since you become pretty open-minded (or at least you try/pretend). By the time you are 16 you'll be really into maintaining a sense of calmness and you will love nature even more than now. You will want to learn and understand everything and will always be searching for interesting things to try out. You'll spend time going to andy warhol exhibits, trying yoga, joining and quitting cross country, obtaining a terrible job and then a wonderful one, having slip-and-slide parties, going hunting for vintage jewelry, and much more. You'll be into lots of different kinds of music and start going to concerts. (Right now you are listening to Kid Cudi and Cat Stevens..weird right?!)You'll have fun.. so for now don't try too hard to plan the future. Almost everything will fall into place and your lifetime of trying to maintain good karma will pay off. Keep your chin up and know that you will be bold and fabulous. (or at least you will try ):)

with love: your 16 year old self