I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and do the Dear Me hashtag by writing a letter to my teenage self and hopefully this will help some of the younger readers learn from my own mistakes!
Dear Me,
Don't change yourself just to fit in.
You don't have to hide the fact that you're capable of getting good grades in school for the fear of people making fun of you and calling you a geek. If these people really were your friends, then they should be supportive of you rather than tearing you down. I had a terrible time with this in school. I remember being placed in all the top sets but none of my old friends were and they would make fun of me constantly for it, so I just felt so down all the time. Actually, I remember trying to change this and trying to make friends with some people in my classes, but they wouldn't be friends with me because I was friends with the other people and I was too scared to speak out for myself. If I'd have known then what I know now, I would have never intentionally tried to get bad grades in school so I could move down sets (don't do it - it doesn't work, and you end up regretting it). I would have never skipped classes and hung around with the 'cool kids' if I knew they didn't care about me.
Dear Me,
Do not always put the needs of others before your own.
Yes, it is important to help people and charity work, tutoring, having your part time job - that's all great. But don't get to the point where you're sacrificing your own well-being to please others. Mainly because these other people that you are trying so hard to please, they won't care anyway. I massively messed up my a-levels when I was 18 because I was working full-time at a bar. You know why?! My assistant manager stole all the money we'd saved up for our staff weekend away, the money out of the till and most of the stock. To make matters worse, my manager had a newborn baby and didn't get his paternity leave. So I did what I thought everyone else would do in my situation and sacrificed EVERYTHING. I thought I could handle it, but I couldn't. I thought everything was going to turn out ok, and it did, but it's taken years to fix.
Dear Me,
Don't be ashamed of what you look like.
Right now, you are 5'0 while everyone around you is growing, you have wavy/frizzy strawberry blonde hair which all of your "friends" swear is ginger, you wear round glasses with thick lenses, you have braces, you're chubby, you haven't developed yet but somehow you're still getting spots. Do not worry about it. You aren't going to look like this forever. Put the bottle of bleach down, put the awful £3 fake tan down. The people that peak in high school don't usually stay that way. Some people transform, loads of girls at my school did and they're better people for the fact that they didn't think they were the 'fit' ones in high school. Nothing is worse than arrogance. You don't have to diet or dye your hair. You are perfect just the way you are.
Dear Me,
It's OK to be different!
Just a reiteration of my previous points. So what if all of your friends are starting to smoke and you have asthma? At least you don't have a gritty voice and yellow teeth now. So what if you want to play the classical guitar? So what if you never grow? Nobody else sees you as any less of a person for these things, so why should you? If I could tell myself where I was going to be if I'd have tried harder in school, if I hadn't dropped out of the drama school or cheerleading. Who knows where I could be right now?
This was a slightly emotional post to write as there are so many things I wish I was able to tell my younger self. But she probably wouldn't listen anyway. So I'm telling my nieces, my next door neighbour's daughter, I'm telling you. My hope is that we can create a world where nobody is ashamed of being who they are. You define yourself, nobody else does. Do not go around pretending you're something that you aren't. You are unique and different and that's great! This is for the next generation; you are perfect,
Love, CJ x
For more on #DearMe, created by youtube, check out this video complied of some of the most inspiring youtubers from around the world.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! What would you all say to your younger selves if you had the chance? Do you think life would have turned out differently? Let me know in the comments or tweet me @milliegordonx
P.S. I really would have loved to have made a youtube video on this topic but I just didn't have the time or the equipment to get it ready in time for International Women's Day. Maybe next year!
CJ x
International Women's Day website.
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