letters to the younger me

   Lately I seem to be in a constant state of nostalgic daydreaming. I feel like I've reached an age where I'm looking back on all the stages of my life, all the people I have been, and why it's made me who I am today. It's still weird for me to realize I'm twenty, I still feel like an awkward 14 year old girl with so much to learn. It's funny how you want so badly to grow up as a child, to do grown up things and have grown up adventures, but then as the years suddenly escape you- you realize how beautiful childhood is and that the true adventure lies within the heart of a young dreamer; untainted and unaware of all the real sadness and cruelty that the world so often throws at you. As a young girl in middle school, I was teased relentlessly, I was somewhat of an outsider and an introvert. I wanted nothing more than to fit in and be like the cool girls who always looked so perfect and who all the boys chased. I hated my hand-me-down clothes, and was mortified and overcome by the insecurity of having "dumbo ears", as the taunting bullies called them. Now, it just makes me sad that I didn't realize the beauty of being 'different'-those things that I hated about myself are the things that made me stand apart from the rest. We spend so much of our lives trying to fit it, when in reality, the most interesting and important people are the ones who stand out. It's funny how life works really, and how time changes things and people. What I wouldn't give to spend one last day as the young and unaware me. To spend a day rollerblading at full speed down the street I grew up on, fearless and uninhibited. To empty my change jar and walk to 7/11 in the Summer heat for slurpees and airheads, not a care in the world to taint my happiness. To play dress up in my mom's closet, living in a fantasy world that was anything and everything I wanted it to be. To live amongst the playing, dreaming, story telling, exaggerating, laughing, crying, spinning, hide & seeking, knee scuffing, journal writing, tree climbing, carelessness that is childhood. A part of us we too often forget about;

a part of me I hope to strengthen and bring alive again.

XXSea