Dear Teenage Self,

You spent too much time worrying about friendships that don’t matter now. Sure, at the time they meant everything to you. Where are those friends now you may ask? Living their own lives as best as they know how. Possibly have forgotten about you. It doesn’t matter the specific details what matters is that right now they are shaping you to become who we are currently.

Yes, even your oldest friendship with your best guy friend ended when he decided not to tell you that he was marrying the love of his life. Went as far as ghosting your texts. The only reason you knew about it is because his parents kindly posted about it on social media. It will be the biggest heartache to date for you, but trust me it was the wake up call you will need later. That doesn’t mean I want you to abruptly end this friendship now because you do need it until the inevitable end trust me on this.

Currently, you are spending more time focusing on yourself. You are probably wondering why your 20s self is focusing on yourself? Do you recall, at all, the last time you really focused on yourself and not worried about being a people pleaser to keep friendships alive. Trust me when I say you don’t figure out you haven’t thought about your needs until you’re at your lowest and wondering where these friendships went wrong. You of course start recalling the red flags you ignored and realize this time is about you and what you want to do. Not to say, you have forgotten about still being a kind and considerate person with people not always treating you right, but you are no longer trying to keep people in your life if they don’t want to stay.

It’s been a huge weight lifted off your shoulders to focus on what you like and your constant growth as a person now that you don’t feel the burning need to make sure everyone else isn’t bothered by what you thought about something. Standing up for yourself has been so much easier and not letting people from your past walk all over you and basically putting you down when you try to stand up for yourself, which makes you feel obligated to change your mind. You will be the person with her own thoughts and feelings that you won’t be afraid to share anymore. You also won’t care about others opinions about it either.

I’m not sharing this with you to hope you change yourself because that would change me and I am happy with where I am in life. I have a couple close friends and that’s all I need. I just wanted to let you know your sacrificing your own self desires as a teen was a blessing because once you become a 20 something you have the freedom to make these changes in your life, whereas as a teenager you felt obligated to follow a crowd and not think about yourself. Life feels like you are still stuck in a small box unable to breathe. Even though, that’s when you finally got a bigger box to breathe in with having more freedom it didn’t feel like enough. Not until now. I hope you don’t change. Everything that has happened, happens to help you grow as the person you will eventually become and will continue to become as your interests change throughout life.

You will still be that awkward girl who hates crowds and thinks having many friends is too much, but at least you are actually trying to work on seeing those red flags in people. Stay how you are and don’t change please. I do want to exist and I can’t exist if you change yourself.

Your older mid 20s self