Dear Teenage Sara,
I’m writing because I have some news – some bad, some good.
Acne doesn’t magically disappear once you turn twenty. In fact, I’m beginning to doubt it ever really goes away, but as you age, it does lessen. And once you hit your sophomore year, you’ll finally go to a dermatologist. Seriously, she will save your life.
Math will continue to absolutely suck, but you will intelligently stop taking math classes after you’ve fulfilled your requirements. While the rest of your peers go on to pre-calc and something called ‘trig,’ you will be taking your last math class ever – Algebra II. For some reason, this logic will fail you when it comes to science, and you’ll idiotically continue to take the “smart-kid” science classes. This lapse in judgment will totally wreak havoc with your GPA.
GPAs bring me to something else: college. Don’t listen to your guidance counselor when she tells you that you’re “a shoe-in” for Skidmore College. Because of her “guidance,” you will only apply to three schools: Skidmore, Emerson, and Sarah Lawrence. But you’ll only really want to go to Skidmore, and you’ll apply to Emerson and Sarah Lawrence for form’s sake only.
So when you receive the wait-list letter from Skidmore, you will experience your first panic attack, which will lead you to crawl under your bed and wail inconsolably that, “you’ll never go to college!” Eventually your mother will drag you out and calm you down. Plagued by insecurity, you won’t tell any of your friends where you’ve even applied, so you’ll suffer through this entire process alone. But guess what? Emerson will open you up to a whole new world – it will introduce you to city life, and eventually you’ll end up moving to NYC, something you never would’ve been able to do had you not first experienced the training wheels of Boston.
Stop worrying about boys and sex. Just because you don’t feel any urge to kiss a boy at 16 does not mean you’re a lesbian. Seriously, relax. It’ll all happen, and none of it will be as scary as you think.
Family. You won’t believe this, but your mother and sister will become your best friends. As soon as you leave for college, the intense animosity between you and your sister will magically dissolve. You’ll start to discover that she’s actually really cool. Your mother turns out to be kind of amazing as well. When you’re twenty-two, she’ll tell you and your sister that she smokes weed – and the three of you will totally get high together. She’ll help you look for your first house, and once you find it, she’ll stay with you for the first week to help you pick out paint colors. Every time you make a big life decision, you’ll call her first. With every year that goes by, you will appreciate her more and more, and with every year that goes by, you will apologize more and more for being such a monster in high school. I wish I could tell you to cut her some slack right now, but I understand why you can’t.
How can you even think about how your mother feels right now, when you’re consumed 100% of the time with how you feel? You feel misunderstood by everyone in your life. Your best friends betray you. Boys are callous and sometimes cruel. Your sister tortures you, and your mother humiliates you. You feel so alone so often. Yeah, your teenage years are full of exciting “first” experiences and discoveries. But when you are my age, you won’t look back upon those years with eyes glazed over by nostalgia. You will breathe a huge sigh of relief, and thank your lucky stars that you’ve finally shaken the vice-like grip of emotional mutiny called adolescence.
