Message to a Younger Meghan (aka Me.)

Occasionally, as I am surfing my online prison of tumblr, I stumble across posts detailing how we would like to punch our freshman-year selves, throttle the versions of us that habited our bodies during those perilous junior-high years. I usually laugh (in my head) and agree, but the other day I was thinking. I know who I am and who I have been. I know how things impact me as a person. Having someone walk up to me, let alone my future self, and punch me in the face would scar me. Even if the punch wasn't physical, even if it hadn't been my future self (because honestly that just isn't happening), I know I would have curled up into a ball and retreated to some self-loathing corner of my mind.

At eighteen, in the scheme of things I'm not much older now than I was in junior-high. Still, I know I have grown as a person, gaining some degree of confidence in myself through high school. Back before my gradual changes, I shriveled at the thought of speaking to people, and I hated myself almost as much as I hated the rest of the school. It's a typical thing to be a negative thirteen year old, I suppose, but it was not a healthy way of thinking. I viewed people who wore Uggs and Abercrombie as the enemy, not to be spoken to or acknowledged. I thought it was me against everyone else, and I am sure others thought that way, too. However, that behavior doesn't warrant a sock in the jaw. No, I think that only would have made things worse.

Instead, if I happened across my shapeless, awkward, past-self, I would sit down and offer the cookies I used to bake nearly every weekend back then. I'd probably sigh and hum a little, because I am awful at starting conversations. Then, before thirteen-year-old-Meghan could sidle away, I'd break it down for her.

I would explain that the world isn't an enemy, and that the people I wasted so much time hating are just as insecure. That she needs to open her eyes a bit wider and step onto the path that is paved for awhile. Trying to separate yourself only makes things more difficult. That it is better to focus on the good around, those who love you, than what it broken and crumbling. And of course, the classic "life isn't fair." Because life can't be fair. You just have to accept the bad and move on. It isn't fate's job to balance the good and the bad; it's yours. What is good in the world all depends on what you see around you. It's a bit like an Instagram filter that way, you could say. We're all looking the same matter, but the tone of it is based on your angle. I would tell her to wake up and pay attention to others, especially the ones you judge most harshly, and try to place yourself in those status-building clothes. People, on the inside, are mostly the same.

But I would say all of this gently. Kindly. Because that is what she needed.

Then I would tell her to forget everything I'd just said. She did end up figuring out on her own, didn't she? That phase helped me grow as a person into what I am today, just as my current outlook will help me develop in the future.

The Meghan of the past is still in there somewhere, I guess. The only difference is that now, I know how to treat her.