When the past becomes bearable

I like who I am.

Years ago, most of my life, really, I never thought I'd be able to say that and have it be true. But it is.

It didn't happen in a flash, a brilliant moment of enlightenment: I LIKE ME! Like nearly everything important, it came when I didn't realize.

It's an odd thing to mention, I know, but this evening a group of authors who write young adult novels filled their little niche of the internet with tweets and blogs and Facebook statuses with notes to their high school selves saying what they wish they had known. Each started with "Dear teen me . . . "

A lot of wonderful advice shot back and forth across the web, coming from writers across the globe. Much of the advice they gave sounded eerily familiar: boys, friends, parents, school, weight.

Thinking about it, though, I realized that I wouldn't want to have gotten little hints or cheats from my future self. I like who I am now, so that means if something in the past changed to make my life easier, I wouldn't be the woman I am today.

The purpose of the exercise wasn't to bridge the gap of space and time between past and present selves. I realize that. But most of the advice I saw was tailored to the woman sharing it, specific situations or people they had dealt with.

Instead of giving a specific piece of advice to my young self, I would say the thing I had wished most to hear. This is what I'd say:

I love you, no matter what you do or what happens to you. Please don't ever be afraid that something you've done will push me away or make me hate you; it won't. I will always be here. Nothing can change that. 

My mom died when I was sixteen, so I lost that person, the one who could have said this to me. Hearing this may well have changed my life. It seems like a small thing, knowing there isn't anything I could ever do or say that would make me reprehensible to her. No matter what.

Life would have been a lot easier had I known that, but as I said, I like who I've become because of this journey. That doesn't mean I won't tell this to every young woman I get to know. You'd better believe I will, most importantly because it's true. Nothing they could do would ever make me hate them.

Once someone lets me into her life, she's not getting rid of me. I'm like a parasite that way.