Dear Me,

Hey you. Recognize me? Probably not, but don’t let that alarm you. It’s a good thing that I look different. Talk different. Act different. Let me reintroduce myself. I’m you, but I’ve just finished my freshmen year of college. You’ve just begun.

Time is a funny thing. Sometimes a month can feel like a day… sometimes it can feel like a year. You graduated around the very end of May and were expected to start college at Columbia in the beginning of September. You had three months of free time, three months of planning and celebrating your future and your newfound adulthood. Now your first day of college is here and all you can think is “Man, those three months felt like three days. I can’t believe I’m already here”. I know you’re about to take a big step, but do not make it out to be more than it is. It’s just another day, another school, another year. You’ve done this before, even though this time feels bigger and scarier.

When you graduated high school, it was an odd mixture of happiness and sadness. Your senior year was really rough. What started as your best year of high school ended as the worst. You lost a lot of friends and in turn, lost yourself. While the end of high school brought a wave of excitement, you were also still mourning. The three months of summer began to feel more like a chore than a celebration. Who were you meant to spend summer with if all of your friends were gone? Your parents told you over and over that it was going to be okay. You were going to make new friends in college. But how were you supposed to trust or let anyone new into your life after the betrayal you experienced?

The last month of that summer was the worst. You began to shut yourself into your room every day. You didn’t want to see anyone and you especially didn’t want to go to college. You spent your days crying and blaming yourself for everything bad that happened your senior year. You can choose to label it however you want: a phase, a transition period, etc. You can sugarcoat it for the rest of your life, but you and I both know what it was. Depression. You were too sad to start college. The next four years were supposed to be the best of your life, but you simply couldn’t start them like this.

So now we’re here. It’s your first day of college. You have your heart set on not talking to anybody. You plan on eating lunch alone. You plan on going to the library after class to do homework alone. You plan on doing this every day for as long as you can. You don’t want to get hurt because that’s all that people do… hurt you. But I know what’s to come for you. I’m on the other side of things. Someone once asked me, “If you could go back and give your past self some advice, what would you say?” and this is it.

Don’t be afraid. Talk to people. Make conversation. Interact with your peers and be yourself. Don’t hold back. Sure, you’re a little loud and crazy but the truest of them all will learn to love your loud and crazy. Believe it or not, some of the people you encounter this year will become your best friends. When you meet them, you’ll never see it coming. But at this moment in time, they mean the world to you.

Don’t keep yourself in. I know it’s scary to hang out with people for the first time. It’s even worse when they invite you to their house or their dorm. You’re going to feel a lot of pressure and you’re going to think going home is the better option. I promise you the moments you let go of your inhibitions will lead to some of the most amazing adventures of your life. There’s nothing to worry about. You're going to feel stupid for ever considering going home in the first place.

Take risks. Cut all your hair off. Forgive the people who hurt you. Talk to that boy on the train. Go vegetarian because why not? Get more tattoos. Write about sex in your Fiction classes. Wear your cheesiest, brightest 1980’s clothing you bought from the thrift store. Pet random dogs on the street because you can. Go out of your comfort zone. I can tell you right now, you’ll do all of these things and you’ll find so much joy in them. You lived your whole life being terrified of what other people thought but that’s the last thing you need to worry about in this new environment. You are going to attend a very open and welcoming school and I promise you that your idea of wild and “out of the box” will be ten times tamer than the rest of the student body anyway.

All in all, take care of yourself. People will call you selfish for taking time for you. People will judge you for trying to love yourself. But you’ve never loved yourself. You’ve never once looked in the mirror and not seen a single flaw. College is a time for growth and a time for finding yourself. You’re slowly going to learn what you want and need and who should be kept in your life or eliminated from the picture. Stop wasting your time believing you’re inferior or that your feelings are invalid. You are important and you are beautiful. Hopefully, the next three years will instill those values even more.

You won’t be lost forever. You will find your way and I believe (No, I know) that more than anything in the world.