Dear Teen Me, from Author Sarah Skilton (BRUISED)

Posted on August 29, 2011
Subscribe to RSS Feed

Dear Teen Sarah,

Me and my pals at 13, presumably before a band concert. I'm the Four-Star General on the far right.

I know you lie awake sometimes at night wondering why you’re sad. You have a great family and great friends. You’re incredibly lucky, and you don’t want for anything, and you know this — which is why you feel guilty for being unhappy. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just be happy?

Sometimes you wish something bad would happen, so you would be justified in feeling so down. At least then it would make sense.

It’s no fun living like that. Whenever something bad or difficult actually does happen, you feel like it’s penance or punishment for having been sad before you had the right to be.

Age 14 or 15. Why choose between stripes and solids when you can have both?

There are three things I’d like to tell you that may prove useful.

Unfortunately, the three things contradict one another.

1) Remember how Mom and Dad were allergic to cats and it took years to convince them to allow one, and in the meantime you learned everything there was to know about every kind of cat? Years. It took years to get a cat. You were obsessed. And Amund, the sweet Maine Coon kitty, was worth waiting for.

Later, on a whim, for precisely one afternoon, you decided you wanted gerbils. Inexplicably, you were allowed to get them the next day. This was a terrible idea. The moment you brought them home you hated them. They were super-annoying running in their wheels at night by your bed, and they constantly escaped and chewed holes in your clothes. The point is, you happen to be the kind of person who needs to want things for a long time before you get them, or you won’t appreciate them. Whims do not satisfy you.

So the lesson, I guess, is “Nothing worth having ever comes easy,” right?

EXCEPT

The exact opposite is true when it comes to love.

2) Pain does not make a relationship better or more “real.” You have some peculiar ideas about love, almost universally gleaned from films and TV shows, about fire and ice and opposites attracting and love/hate being superior to all other types of relationships. What’s wrong with love/love?

Love should come easy. The best relationships do. Don’t bother pretending, Teen Sarah. I’ve got you pegged. You like romantic movies and you like having crushes, but you’re not ready to have a boyfriend. What you really want is some indication that a relationship once took place. You want to stare wistfully out the window and re-read old love notes from days gone by that never really were. You’ll be the last of your friends to kiss someone. You’ll be the last of your friends to date. And that’s perfectly okay. There will be plenty of time in the latter half of high school, not to mention college, to have boyfriends.

Age 17. My senior portrait. If I smile, people might not think I'm deep.

The relationships that last are not filled with arguments, stress, anxiety or insecurity. They’re comfortable. They’re natural. They come easy because they fit right. The relationships from high school that last are the ones you have with your friends, whether male or female.

Now here’s where it gets maddening…

3) Getting what you want or not getting what you want doesn’t actually matter. In fact, sometimes getting what you want turns out to be the worst thing for you.

You won’t figure this out until you leave for college, and you can laugh about it now, but it turns out you’re allergic to cats just like your parents are, and every trip home for holiday breaks is filled with itchy eyes, stuffy noses, sore throats and general misery. Your dream of owning a cat has become… something else. Not a nightmare. But something else.

Even when you get the things you want, your happiness won’t last; it can’t, because when you think of the things you want so desperately, they’re on a fixed point on a horizon you can’t see past, a Before and After in your mind. You believe everything will be different or better if you could just reach them, but when you catch up to them, you realize there are a million horizons beyond them.

18 years old, the summer before college (aka my last hurrah without allergies).

And that’s a good thing. It means life continues whether you get what you want or not — so your disappointments and heartbreaks won’t last forever, either. Your friends and family can’t make things perfect, but they’ll support you regardless of what happens, and you’ll do the same for them.

Still sucks about the cats, though. I mean, come on.

Adult Sarah!

After growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduating with a TV/Radio degree from Ithaca College in upstate New York,
Sarah Skilton moved to sunny Los Angeles, where her blood promptly thinned out, preventing her from returning to either location. She married her college sweetheart, Joe, a magician. She’s never been sawed in half, but there’s still time. Sarah is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a fact that came in handy while writing her martial arts-themed debut YA novel, BRUISED, due out Fall 2012 from Amulet Books. She’s represented by Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary.

Tags: , ,

20 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Copyright © 2010-2012 Dear Teen Me All rights reserved.
Desk Mess Mirrored v1.8.1 theme from BuyNowShop.com.