Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (10 page)

Heather Davis

Dear Teen Me,

It’s not easy raising yourself and your sisters, and it’s not fair. Even all these years later, as I look back at all you’re going through, it still makes me mad. What kind of a mother bails out on her daughters?

The day your parents told you they were getting divorced you were secretly happy that you and your sisters would be living with Dad, but you had no way of knowing that Mom was going to move out of town. And then out of state. And then out of your lives altogether.

You had no way of knowing that your grandmother would be the one to take you to be fitted for your first bra. She would have to be the one to buy you that massive box of feminine pads (which would sit on your shelf, untouched, for what seemed like forever).

You had no way of knowing that your dad would come to rely on you to take care of your younger sisters. That you would be the responsible one. The one who doesn’t want to let anyone down. The one who your sisters look up to and then later resent—after all, you’re more than a sister, but less than a parent.

But you don’t blame Dad—how could you? He’s a single parent, coming into his own true identity away from Mom, trying his best to help you along the way. If anything, you should give him a hug and tell him that you understand. Years later, he’ll be one of your very best friends.

You’re in the toughest part of it all right now. During these teen years, your mother will blow into town every once in a while to ask personal questions and observe you like you’re some kind of science experiment: Did you get your period yet? Are you shaving your legs now? Did you pluck your eyebrows?

And even though it makes you uncomfortable, you answer, because she is your mother. You answer because you feel you should. You answer because you don’t want to disappoint her—which is so messed up, because all the while she’s the one who’s disappointing you.

And she’ll take this personal information that she extracts from you and lord it over your father. She tells him about the private things she’s mined as if they prove she’s still involved, that she knows something personal—something you were clearly too embarrassed to share with Dad. During these drop-ins she usually takes you to the movies. She tells you she loves you. And then she leaves. Over and over again, she leaves.

You feel powerless to say, “You have no right to me.” You feel helpless to tell her to leave you the hell alone. That she is a stranger now.

Over time, her appearances confuse your understanding of what it means to love and be loved. You begin to accept that words don’t have to match actions. That sometimes love is a thing bargained for with silence. You start to crave that kind of love, which is a devaluing and insidious one. This craving will stick with you for years. It’s something you’ll have to learn to overcome.

Keep doing your best. Right now, your little sisters need you. And, I promise you, even if it’s many years from now, someday you will know real love. The kind where words match actions. The kind that doesn’t leave you hanging. The kind that never lets you go.

Daniel Ehrenhaft

Dear Teen Me,

Picture the scene: Your boarding school crush (we’ll just leave it at that in order to protect her identity here) has asked you to see a movie in New York City. This is a big deal for all sorts of reasons. Even though they’re arranged by your boarding school, shuttle bus trips to New York City suggest the possibility of something exciting and dangerous. So yeah, of course you’re going to go. When you get into the city, you sign out to an exact location—a movie theater or a gallery or something like that…but the truth is that you only have two goals for the day: (1) find a hash pipe (even though you’ll overpay for one and never use it), and (2) hook up with your Crush.

Your Crush is already in New York City visiting her family, so she’s not on the shuttle bus. But you’ve arranged a meeting spot: a bodega off of Union Square, near the theater.

When you arrive, she’s not there.

You circle the block, hoping there was some misunderstanding. You’re a boarding school kid, after all; New York City is full of secrets that only the locals know—so perhaps there’s another bodega? Since ninth grade, you’ve always secretly imagined and identified yourself as a New York City kid precisely because
you go to boarding school
. All your new friends live in New York City. You might as well be a local…right? You’ve long since severed most ties you have with your hometown, except for one close friend and your immediate family. But now you feel terribly alone. There is no other bodega; there was no misunderstanding.

But there is a used bookstore. So you wander in—knowing you have hours to kill (there’s no way you’re going to see a movie alone), and knowing you’ll have to come up with a fabulous lie to convince your friends she didn’t blow you off (there’s no way they’ll believe you). Instead, you find a dog-eared copy of
Mother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut. You loved
Cat’s Cradle
and
Slaughterhouse Five
, so you dive in. You get lost in it until it’s time to board the shuttle bus home.

Years later, you’ll try to justify this crushing disappointment as a “turning point.” You’ll try to attach cosmic significance to it. Ha! Pure BS. I can tell you so because I ran into your Crush recently. She claims that she had a huge crush on you, too. She claims she blew you off that day because she was worried you wouldn’t show. She claims all sorts of things. Weak excuses, but you let them slide. You both laugh. Either way, your kids are the same age, just toddlers, so you arrange a playdate, knowing it will never happen. Neither of you can remember the movie you went to. You think it was
Sid & Nancy
. She thinks it was
A Fish Called Wanda
.

Doesn’t matter. Because you know what? You suddenly felt much lighter.