Dear hannie, age fifteen from author Hannah Moskowitz (BREAK, INVINCIBLE SUMMER)
Dear hannie, age fifteen,
So this isn’t a happy letter.
Hannah Moskowitz, right. Circa 2006.
Because you wouldn’t want that. You’ve written a lot of letters to me. When you were eleven, you sat in your room after Thanksgiving and wrote out a whole long letter for you to open ten years later. Pages and pages long. A few weeks later, you’d forgotten what was in it. A few years later, you’d opened it in a fit of depression, looking for meaning, looking for something.
Hannah, 2006.
What you got was a watered down list of crap that could have been from anyone. You wanted to see the fear and the weight and the poems about death that you knew eleven-year-old hannah had scrawled in the margins of all her notebooks. You remembered it. But you hadn’t written it down, because you were hoping that, in ten years, you’d have forgotten.
Hannah and her best friend, 2006.
It’s only been eight years, I guess, but I haven’t forgotten.
Lately there have been all these videos, these amazing videos, centered around the lesson It Gets Better. And as soon as I started watching them, I started thinking about what an impact they would have made on you, and how badly you needed to hear that it really does get better. I would have loved to hear that, by the time you were nineteen, you’d have five books sold, a house of your own, a great relationship with your parents, three cats, and an amazing, close friendship with the same best friend you had when you were nine, and when you were eleven, and when you were fifteen.
Hannah, right, 2004.
You would have heard that and thought that that mean you were happy. You would have interpreted all of that as It Gets Better.
I want to tell you that it does.
It hasn’t, yet.
Part of what makes writing this letter so hard is, at the risk of playing that fucking prodigy card or whatever, that I am still so young. I’m nineteen. I’m either supposed to be miserable or deliriously happy, and most of the time I fall somewhere between the two. You don’t, but that’s because you haven’t reached out for help yet, and you really should. You really shouldn’t wait until you’re nineteen and everyone’s ideas of you are solidified. There are people around who know you need help. You should get it.
Hannah, 2008.
But don’t think it will fix everything.
You will sell the books. You will be on the shelves. It will be incredible. It will make you proud and excited and terrified and amazed and thankful, but it will not make you happy.
You will make you happy. In little bits, and then more and more, and gradually, I have to believe that it will stop being something that we have to work for. And I do believe it, most of the time.
So the message I leave you with is, It Will Get Better.
We have to believe it.
Keep calm and carry on,
hannah
Simon Pulse, April 2011.
Hannah Moskowitz writes books, blogs, and stalks publishing news and trends. Her first YA novel, BREAK, about a boy on a mission to break all his bones, came out with Simon Pulse in August ’09. Her next book, INVINCIBLE SUMMER, is about growing up at the beach and having sex and learning sign language, April ’11, Simon Pulse, and her 3rd YA is THE ANIMALS WERE GONE, 2012. Hannah’s first middle grade, ZOMBIE TAG, about a boy who has to save the world from zombies after he wakes them up to see his dead brother again, is coming in Fall ’11 from Roaring Brook Press. Publishing makes her frustrated and confused and indignant and she love every minute of it. At least most of the time.
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This had me tearing up. You're wonderful.
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Obviously you are a deep thinker. Your line, “You will make you happy,” is true and real…and deep. I hope you get to the other side, into the happy, with YOU leading the way.
Something to ponder…don’t beat yourself up for you “watered down” 15 year old letters. With age comes wisdom, and depth, and the ability to not only recognize pain but also capture it in writing. I guess age (and living…surviving…experiencing) also brings on the ability to accept who we are.
Great letter, Hannah…fellow Simon Pulser : )
I will certainly be picking up your books, and hopefully our wisdom!
or yourrr wisdom
Oh, Hannah. I so felt this, and sometimes still do.
Fabulous post. xo <3
Thank you for this letter, from everyone who has felt that happiness might never come.
Nice! Now I’m going to write a letter to my fifteen-year-old self and tell him to stop playing video games and go talk to some girls.
This is so sweet. And relatable. I look forward to reading your books!
One of the best things that happens as you get older is that you develop a sort of perspective, a way of looking at your same life with new eyes. You won’t know it’s happened until you meet a young person who is troubled by life in the same ways you were, and you’re always surprised you hadn’t noticed you’d moved beyond it.
If I could offer advice to my younger self (or anyone’s younger self) it would be this: It is transition that causes pain. It’s change, that’s all. And yes, believe me, it gets better.
thank you!
Aww, hannah, it does get better. I hope it never stops. <3
This is one of the many many reasons I love you.
This is beautiful. Seriously. WOW.
I wish I could have read that when I was eleven, or fifteen, or nineteen, or thirty. Actually, I’m just glad I read it now. You’re every possible shade of awesome, Hannah.
“You will make you happy.” That’s a lesson that most people never learn. Well done at learning that so early!