I know you, or should I say, I remember you. It's 10:55 on a Saturday night, and you feel the silence creeping under your skin like it is eating you alive. This isn't the first time you've felt this way. In fact, it won't even be the last. Before you finally accept the fact that you are not mentally healthy, you'll go through many stages.
You'll get angry.
You will lash out at everyone you love, not realizing that this will follow you well into your teenage years... You won't want to leave your room and you will lock yourself away to cry and scream when you should be finding help. You will hate everyone and everything because there is no one else to blame but yourself -- but you want to blame it on everyone else. You will fight off all your friends, and eventually, they won't try to keep you around.
You'll question everything.
You will sit alone at night, and question what you did wrong. You will watch videos, wondering if you will ever be able to be as brave as the people on the screen. Someday, one of those people will become a friend of yours, and she will help you through a lot of things you didn't know you could ever face. You will wonder if you are broken, if something went wrong, if you made a wrong choice, anything to explain this feeling you have. You never asked to feel this way, you didn't want to have the feelings you do.
You will want to end it all...
You didn't ask to be made fun of, yet every day is a new slur, something worse each day and every time you ask yourself what you've done. No 12-year-old should know those words... Every day, you wake up afraid to go to school, because the moment you walk through those doors, your fate is sealed. By the end of the day, you are numb to the world and as you walk slowly to the car where your mother waits for you with a smile, you ask yourself again: "Why am I alive..?" No child should be made to feel this way. No child should ever have to face each night with the hope to not wake up the next morning. But that is exactly what you are going to hope. You will pray it...
You will blame God.
You will throw away all the things you have ever believed about a higher being and you will abandon it for the thought process that you, yourself, have been abandoned. You will be convinced that you were a mistake, a problem to God; if there ever was one. That has to be why you feel this way, right? You weren't even meant to be!
But that's wrong. Life will never be fair for you, it will never be easy. You will face many challenges that a kid like you shouldn't have to face. But they will make you stronger. You will come out of this a better person, and I promise you, someone out there does love you, and will love you regardless of all your anxieties, moods and fears. It is okay to be you, sweetheart, and it's okay to be afraid of it. What isn't okay, is when you try to force yourself to be someone else. Don't let the world change you, because you will do great things, being who you are. Don't let anyone or anything dull your sparkle. Be fabulous, be true, BE YOU.
You will be okay.
I promise you one thing; you will make it through this. You will make it through many things before you are old and grey like I am now. You will make memories, you will fall in love, you will become an actress, you will face your fears. You will shine. But, you have to remember not to give up in order to get to all that. So, remember, it will all be okay, and just smile. You've got this.
-Adult You
P.S: I love you.
