If there were things I could've told you back then, trust me I would've. Like even though ninth grade might've felt like the worst year of your life, senior year wouldn't turn out to be all that much better. I guess it's true that things always come full circle. I would've told you that you'd get denied from your top choice college, but the one you'd end up in is for a reason. Even though you'll be nervous at first, you'll end up loving it.
There are a lot of things I've learned since I was 13. Like how to love yourself even when everything feels like its going wrong. Also, when you find the right people, surround yourself with them because they'll only encourage you to prosper and bloom into a better person than you were the day before. That even if most of the people in high school kinda (definitely) suck, you'll make amazing new real friends your first week of college.
If I could've told you that the brown-eyed boy with braces you met on Halloween when you were 14 would completely change your life a few years later, I definitely would have. If I could've told you that things can always get worse, no matter how bad they get, I would've until you believed me. Because even if things get bad, or really bad, there's always something better around the bend, you just have to get there.
Things change. A lot. People change, places change, thoughts change, you'll change. Everything changes and sometimes its for the better and sometimes its not, but thats part of the beauty of figuring your life out. Right now, you want to be a journalist or even maybe a zoologist (until your mom told you that was silly, turns out she was right). You hate science and math now, but in a few years you'll be majoring in environmental engineering and even making the Dean's List.
My point of this is that you're going to feel defeated a lot in your life, but every time you'll just come back stronger and conquer more than anyone expected you to. You'll spend your life proving people wrong and surprising them with just how much you can actually accomplish in this little time we have here on Earth. Things will get hard and sometimes you'll fail, but as long as you try again and learn from the experience, you'll always succeed eventually.
