Dear Me—the Teenage Version of Me:

I’m going to say something that another person filled with regret would never say and it’s this: you did nothing wrong. In fact, I wouldn’t change a thing about the decisions you made, even knowing the outcome years later. You weren’t troubled. You weren’t misled or misheard. You weren’t overly emotional. You were just trying to understand how society handled you and that is not a fault.

Sure, little things didn’t have to happen, like that time you chalked “fuck you” on the neighbor’s driveway when she flipped you off. I still think that moment was integral to the life I’m leading today. I’m scared that any little change to any tiny decision would produce a domino effect of different results that would place my twenty-seven-year-old self in a completely different realm of possibility. Like a multiversal branching of probabilities could have opened up because I decided to let that neighbor’s crude finger go; to never retaliate with imprudent, childish glee. And while I had to deal with a very scary financial drought in sudden unemployment for the entirety of this summer, I still think I have become the best person I possibly could be if it came down singularly to my teenage decisions.

Don’t change. Don’t second-guess yourself. I would never step into a time machine if the parameters were to stop an embarrassment that haunts me for the rest of my life because it’s that embarrassment that taught me to never trust a tampon again.

And when Mom and Dad clued you in to a shocking romantic secret, you handled it better than anyone else I can presently think of. I wouldn’t ever want that to change. It’s your ability to redirect emotional energy into significant priorities that stopped you from unnecessary heartache and your flexibility with giving grace that helped you see the good in everything that happened. If you had to be told one thing by the future product of your experiences, it’s that your open mind inevitably saved your life.

You’ll first meet these new people who introduce themselves to you as family friends, like a new Aunt and Uncle. They’ll bring novelty sandwich shop bread for French toast mornings and Easter basket traditions. Your first decision is to trust them and to let fun into your life. Why not? It was a good decision.

When you’re asleep downstairs in your loft bed, head close to the short ceilings and tucked in for strange pre-teen dreams, you might hear a strange noise in the bedroom above you, but you’ll think it’s the floorboards and you’ll comment in the morning to your mother about the weird noise you heard. She’ll hum that it was pretty weird and you’ll accept it and move on. I don’t fault you for that.

We’ll move to a new house, later to discover that Aunt and Uncle helped Mom and Dad pay for this move, and more family games and dinners will be made with them, but Mom and Dad will also be gone a lot more. You’ll be babysitting for many nights, naively proud of your parent’s budding social lives, but feeling trapped with your four younger brothers. It’s okay to feel this way. I think it made you more patient.

One day, though, you’ll find a letter in the pile of paper junk on the computer desk when you’re “sick” and writing stories in the middle of a school day. You’ll notice it’s signed by Dad, and that the words, “I’m falling in love with you” is addressed to Aunt. You’ll feel your stomach slam into the floor of your pelvis and you’ll choke back empathetic heartache for Mom and her unfaithful husband. You’ll pull Mom aside the minute she’s home from work and you’ll sob about what you discovered and she’ll comfort you and tell you that you’ve got it all wrong. It’s okay that you were scared for her, but more importantly, scared for yourself and for your brothers. You were scared for the sanctity of our family unit, and it’s okay that for a brief moment, you were scared of Aunt and Uncle. It means you cared.

Mom will say, “I’m in love with Uncle, too. Come, we have to have a family talk, you, me, and Dad.” She’ll open your mind to a new way of living, to a new reality you have to confront called Polyamory. You’ll start to learn about their sex lives, even when you don’t want to, but in the end, it will make you more open about sex and they won’t helicopter you about your own sexual experiences. You’ll thank them for that later, even though Dad often dropped too much information about Polyamorous lifestyles that made you feel uncomfortable.

You’ll know more than your brothers. They won’t know for a while, and when your younger brother finds out on his birthday that Mom is making love with Uncle, you’ll feel powerless to help his emotional anguish. He’s more sensitive than you and you have to be a lighthouse for your younger siblings, but you won’t be equipped with the right tools to comfort them. You’ll make the decision to be a teenager, to go out with your friends, and find as much time out of the house as possible. You’ll manipulate your parents that you’re overwhelmed with all their babysitting requests and they’ll throw money at you like it’s supposed to fix the suffocation you’re feeling. You’ll think it’s selfish of you, but you were looking out for yourself. That’s important. That’s okay.

Aunt becomes your friend, though. Through it all, she teaches you how to do your makeup and she gives you a job at her local business. She shows interest in your writing and she takes you to fun events. She even plans a special graduation trip, a trip to Europe, and you feel she’s your friend. This was never a bad thing. In fact, you made a great decision to learn valuable lessons from her about life—about a life different from a traditional, family-oriented one. You’ll learn that you won’t ever want to have kids and that it’s okay to be that way. You’ll find confidence and edginess and love yourself because she taught you to do that, things Mom couldn’t quite teach you at the time. This is good, it will make you who I am today.

It’s inevitable that one of the relationships would fail. It is inevitable that it will be Aunt dumping Dad. It will ruin the household for a time. Dad will be angry that you’ll still go to Europe with Aunt and Uncle. You make another decision and one that I still don’t regret today. You go to Europe. You have your first drink at eighteen and you unlock your wanderlust.

She’ll disappear, though. She’ll feel too much guilt for having “ruined” our family and she’ll ghost you. You’ll stay up late at night wondering what you did wrong. You’ll go get a new job so you don’t have to work in that sandwich shop any longer and you’ll go to college feeling a bit bitter about Aunt, but that’s a necessary development too. You did nothing wrong.

You’ll decide to put your energy toward school, then toward a boyfriend, then into buying a home and getting puppies. You’ll continue living with new perspectives on monogamy and maybe with a little bit of emotional damage you won’t quite work through until you dump that ex after seven years of being in love. None of it I regret. None of it should ever be changed. I am who I am because of it and for that, I actually have to thank you.

What I wish you had known back then was that you were doing everything perfectly. You were not messed up. You were not traumatized. You handled it the best way you could. You were amazing.

Don’t ever change. You figured out how society would handle you, but more importantly, how you would handle society. You did nothing wrong.

And I love you for that.

With Love,
The Future You Curated