Monologue Monday: Letters To My Younger Self #3

Letters To My Younger Self:

Things That I Wish I Knew About Waiting, Dating and Confidence

 

This letter is kind of embarrassing. Not in the funny way, but in the ‘I can’t believe I allowed that to happen’ kind of way.

My advice to my younger self this week would be: Don’t try to impress others.

This may seem like pretty standard knowledge, but when I was in high school and even college, I did some pretty dumb things all in the name of love while trying to impress certain people.

It’s not that I thought that being myself wasn’t enough, because even then I maintained a certain sense of awareness about who I was and what I wanted out of life, and I was focused on achieving those things…it’s just I went overboard some times.

So I definitely had my moments when I was like ‘why did I do that?’

I guess it would be even more embarrassing if I were still making the same mistakes now that I was then, but since I’m not, I guess I should be thanking my younger self for the knowledge that it has forced me to learn through certain things that I experienced back then.

Maybe I should give you some examples for those of you reading this wondering ‘like what?’ These are just a few of the ones that immediately come to mind, but trust me when I say this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg…

*Taking my ENTIRE two week paycheck to buy my then boyfriend a ridiculously expensive watch for his birthday….that was stolen on campus 2 weeks later. (Here’s the thing on this one- Buying gifts for a boyfriend or any of my friends is not crazy to me. I know some girls who are like ‘he’s supposed to be spending money on you...not the other way around’. I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE GIRLS. If I care about someone, family members and friends alike, I like to shower them with gifts from time to time. This doesn’t always mean materialistic though. Sometimes it’s my time, energy, or something else. (Like if they’ve been wanting to do something but I haven’t had the time- I’ll just surprise them one day and cancel everything that’s on my agenda and make the day strictly about them). That said, in this situation it wasn’t me buying him a gift that was dumb- it was the fact that I took all of my money to pay for it….not cool. This was when I was a freshman in college, so since then I have learned how to budget money and how to be responsible. Now I give myself a budget that is inline with my finances, and if something is over that I go back to the drawing board and think of a different idea. My advice to my younger self in this situation is don’t live a lie…or try to be something that you aren’t. Stick within your means and be yourself…that’s better than any amount of money or gift).

*Being ambiguous about my boundaries when I first got into a relationship with my ex. (I was going to go into detail about this one, but I think it deserves its own letter. Maybe I’ll write more about this next week…we’ll see).

*This one isn’t about dating, but it still goes along with the topic: Wearing crazy high heels to a premiere in London while walking across gravel. (Seriously…. I’m the kind of girl who tries to have a pair of flats in her bag at all times to avoid situations like this. It’s one thing to walk the underground in sky high heels, but walking across gravel and pebbles of rocks when there were flashing lights every where. Thank God I didn’t break my leg). Going forward, I wear what I’m comfortable in. I’m just as much into heels as the next girl, but I know my limits now. If I know that those platforms are going to cause me to end up in the emergency room, I’m going to opt out.

Honestly, I guess these weren’t all that embarrassing, especially considering the payoff of me having learned valuable lessons…So maybe in this letter I realized that my past is just as important as my present and future because it taught me lessons.

It’s one thing to make mistakes, but it’s another to keep repeating them.