dear me || today you are eighteen

you made eighteen and you're too tired to function!!

Dear me, today you are eighteen. You have accomplished a whole lot in your eighteen years and you should be insanely proud of it. You have done so much good for yourself and maybe, hopefully, you have even done some good for the people around you. For an eighteen-year-old you’ve been through a lot and you’ve done a good job tackling what has been thrown at you. Dear me, today you are writing this piece two hours before midnight, eating fried rice in an actual place that you pay to live in and listening to show-tunes (of course). You’re wondering whether you’re going to remember your eighteenth in a few years, you’re wondering how your night is going to pan out and you wonder if feeling eighteen is actually going to feel any different. You know it probably won’t and there’s no point in even wondering but you digress. You’re also looking at the time and regretting the choice to stay awake for this long, especially since you have a nine am lecture for creative writing. However, one of your friends is bringing cake for you and that makes everything kind of worth it. Because cake truly is a magical thing and after the week you’ve had it is necessary. You are also, probably, going to have a picnic tomorrow night with your friends and say goodbye to your childhood. It sounds pretty bloody final and dramatic as you type that but it’s kind of truth. You’ve grown up a lot in the past couple of months, and the last week as well. Your entire life has shifted in ways you never could have thought was possible. You’re a university student, living in a box (yes, it’s a box) with relationships that you never thought possible six months ago. Your seventeenth birthday seems like a long time ago, you’re sixteenth even longer and honestly all you can remember from your fifteenth was that it was mother’s day, you were sick and you had to work the entire day. You cannot even remember what cake you ate (let’s face it, there might not have been cake.)

Dear me, be proud of everything you have done. Be proud that you are in university and living in a place you pay rent for. No matter how stressful everything seems sometimes be proud. Be proud of your accomplishments and give yourself some credit every now and again because you’ve done some pretty great things since you’ve actually put your mind to it. Dear me, I hope you never gave up on your dream of becoming a writer. I hope that you stuck to it, because your eighteen-year-old heart wants it so badly and is so desperate to do something about it. Dear me, take a breath today and enjoy your birthday. You’ve earned it.

Chloe, xo.