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Speaking to the Teenager Me

July 5th, 2007 | View Comments

Jane tagged me to respond to the question:

If you were to go back in time and speak with the teenager you, what three things would you say to the teenager that you were?

It’s kind of funny, coming from Jane, because I was still a teenager when we first met online. Have we really known each other that long? Craaaaaazy!

Like many other Americans, I spent my teenage years wadded into a ball of angst. A ball of premium, driven, high-achieving angst. I’m actually pretty proud of the way I carried myself as a teenager; I often look back on those years, particularly my high school years, and wonder how I managed to survive the utter insanity of a workload I imposed on myself. I had confidence in my own abilities to succeed and make a good life for myself, confidence that was backed up by achievement.

But what I lacked was confidence in myself as a person. That even without my resume and my transcript I still deserved other people’s love and friendship. So this is what I would tell my teenager self.

You’re a pretty girl. Make the most of it. This is something that the boys figured out long before I did. I wasn’t the prom queen or anything, but I always had at least one boy who liked me. But I hid behind baggy tops, usually some sort of free T-shirt and a zip-up hoodie, unkempt hair, and big geeky glasses well into my college years. At some point before my last year of college, I was finally introduced to contact lenses, Sephora, the fact that grunge had gone out in 1997, and TLC’s What Not to Wear. My life was forever changed. Or at least my wardrobe.

Ok, maybe not even my wardrobe, at least not right away. I didn’t even realize casual skirts and dresses existed until a couple years ago and it’s only been a few months since I learned to walk in heels. Right now, at the ripe old age of 26, I’m still in the process of donating piles of extremely unattractive clothing and footwear befitting a young frat boy and replacing them with items befitting a young woman. If you’re in need of baggy overalls or T-shirts sized XL, please give me a call.

In all seriousness, it took me much too long to realize the importance of appearance in making good first impressions and to develop the confidence in my own appearance in order to be able to put my best foot forward in both professional and social situations. I still don’t believe in being a slave to designer fashions or spending gobs and gobs of money on clothes and shoes, but I’ve come to appreciate that it never hurts and often helps to look up-to-date and put together.

Surround yourself with people who want the best for you, people who find you worthy of their time and affection, not people interested in jerking you around or tearing you down or pigeonholing you into something you’re not. You deserve better than what you have. I wasn’t a very good judge of character as a teenager. I wasn’t very good at recognizing it when people only claimed to care about me but really sought to undermine me at every turn. I’m not a grudge holder, but the thought or mention of a few people from my teenage years is still enough to make me angry. Angry at them for being so petty, prejudiced, and dishonest, and yet so convinced of their own rightness. Angry at me for keeping them around for so long and letting them do their damage over and over again. If I could go back in time and talk to my teenager self, I would tell me to cut them loose. Nobody needs that kind of “friend.”

Be generous to the world around you. The first step was to realize there was a world around me. As a teenager, I lived in my own head a lot. Part of it was simply ambition and focus, but much of it was because I was afraid to venture out into the real world. Life was safe and easy inside my head, where I had complete control and nothing could sneak up and challenge me. Learning to be open to new people and new experiences and to be concerned with something outside myself was a critical step in my personal development.

And then there were two kinds of generosity to learn. The first was generosity of resources, to give time, money, or goods to those in need. That turned out to be both easy and fun. The second was generosity of spirit. That turned out to be harder.

But as I get older, I increasingly see the value of being generous to those around me. Of having faith in basic human decency, of giving people the benefit of the doubt, of forgiveness, of conceding and apologizing just because the other person needs that small boost today. Of being polite and kind to customer service people, even when they screw up. Of expressing freely my love and admiration for someone else, of making someone feel special, if just for a moment. I truly believe it is gestures like these, gestures of kindness, trust and acceptance, that hold civilization together.

Yvonne posted this on July 5th, 2007 @ 11:41am in Life | Permalink to "Speaking to the Teenager Me"

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