Dear Teen Me, from Sarah “JJ” Jae-Jones (Editorial Assistant Extraordinaire at St. Martin’s Press)

Dear JJ:

Are you still considered a teenager at 18? The law says you can now die for your country, buy porn, buy cigarettes, and make momentous life decisions without consulting your parents. Legally, anyway. Welcome to adulthood, 18-year-old JJ. Isn’t it great?

Awesome things about being an adult: you learn to live with your bipolar disorder, you’re not beholden to anyone, you’re friends with your parents, and you no longer give a shit about what people think about you.

Not-so-awesome things about being an adult: your skin STILL SUCKS (but you discover the wonder that is retinol lotion), your hair is still unruly (but you discover anti-frizz serum), you’re still a little chubby (but you stop caring), and you may not be beholden to anyone, but that also means you can no longer withdraw funds from The Bank of Mum and Dad.

I’ll be completely honest: this letter isn’t about you; it’s about me. It’s about the fact that I’ve reached a quarter-century, that in a few months I will officially no longer be in my “mid-twenties”, that I am closer to 30 than to you, even if I don’t feel like it. Shouldn’t I have it all figured out by now?

Here’s the good news: the life you imagined for yourself as a “grown-up” (whatever that means) has come true. You are living poor in New York City, struggling with writing and art, and being true to yourself.

Here’s the bad news: you are living poor in New York City, struggling with writing and art, and being true to yourself. Well, the last part is awesome. So is living in New York City. But by now, you’ve been here for nearly a decade, and it no longer holds the excitement it once did, just the way cigarettes and porn no longer hold that same illicit thrill (a pity!). That’s the disappointing thing about adulthood; nothing holds the same unadulterated joy it did when you were a child, or even the way it does now for you. If “unadulterated” is to be pure, then you grow more and more “adulterated” each year. Funny how that word and “adulthood” share the same root.

You probably wouldn’t believe it if I told you, but I envy you. I miss you, I miss being you, I miss being young and reckless and stupid, stumbling home from a bar at 4am drunkenly trying to convince a 35-year-old Irishman that it would be a terrible idea to come upstairs with you because you live in a converted hotel dorm room on Fifth Avenue with two other girls. It isn’t that I’m no longer reckless or stupid, or even young, but I miss being irresponsible and careless. I miss having the luxury of making mistakes without significant consequence.

You know this. You know this and you rush headlong into places and situations that would give our mother (and me) a heart attack, relishing your stupid years while you can. But you and I were always precocious and self-aware, and the fact that we know we were precocious just adds to our self-awareness. Unfortunately said self-awareness only lends itself to the realization that I am now old. People scoff when they hear me say this because of course I’m not old. I’m young. But damn, I’m too old for the shit you get into and I mourn that loss a little. Not much, but a little. Enough to make me think, “Holy crap, I suppose I’m an adult now.”

Right now you wish the people around you would take you more seriously, to treat you as the grown-up you and the law think you are. But when you get to my side of 21, you’re secretly excited when bouncers still card you at the door. Because on this side of 21, wearing fishnet tights, schoolgirl skirts, paint-stained hoodies, punk nail polish, too much eyeliner, and Chuck Taylors seems inappropriate instead of normal (not that it stops me…much). At 18, you feel like you’ve got it all figured out, but at 25, I feel more like a poseur than anything else. Because surely an adult doesn’t let her apartment get to toxic levels of filth, or spend her weekends stuffing her face with junk food instead of being productive and healthy, or spends her paycheck on Anthropologie dresses instead of investing it in a mutual fund.

While it’s a shame people underestimate your intelligence, perhaps it is you who overestimates your maturity. Fuck it, it’s awesome being immature and naive and stupid because you can still get away with it. Haven’t you proven yourself enough? Didn’t you kill yourself in high school to get top grades, have the right extracurriculars on your application, all so you could get to 25 well-adjusted and successful? Fuck it, because none of that shit matters. You’ll waste four years after you graduate from college being that “successful” individual with a soulless, well-paying job, trying to squeeze yourself into a cookie-cutter mold that will never fit you. You and your best friend will drink red wine out of coffee mugs and smoke cigarettes in the stairwell of your apartment a few months into your first job, congratulating each other being being adults. The two of you are 20 years old and can’t even buy a drink. While your peers are enjoying their last years of stupidity, you are spending 100 hours a week in an office, wearing pencil skirts and pearl necklaces, wondering if adulthood is all it’s cracked up to be.

So treasure the stupid moments as they come. The time you wasted four cigarettes because you were so drunk you repeatedly lit the filtered ends. The time you woke up in a fuck buddy’s bed to find a naked stranger on the floor, who then subsequently walked out of the room and out into the streets of New York WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES (which were never found in said fuck buddy’s room). The first time you ever smoked pot (out of a four-foot bong) and discovered it’s still fun to write BALLS in Sharpie on someone’s forehead while he’s unconscious. The time you played Strip Twister and then had the photos developed. The time you drank so much you puked on the floor of a gay club and was tended to by a beautiful drag queen named Miss Anija Cox. The time you waltzed in your dorm room with the girl on whom you had a crush. The time when summers had meaning, when life could still fuck you with its beauty, when you could be irrevocably, irresponsibly, indulgently, decadently reckless. The sins of youth will never again taste so glorious. Time enough to have fun before you have to worry about rent, health insurance, student loans, bills, and the concept of a “future”.

So drink deep from the cup of merriment and I’ll see you on the other side of 21.

Always,

JJ

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S. Jae-Jones (called JJ) is an avid skydiver, an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press, and an aspiring writer. When not jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, she can be found devouring young adult fiction and playing with baby harp seals. Visit her website!

Tags: Macmillan, St. Martin's Press