A Letter to My 17-Year-Old Self

Learning to love yourself doesn’t come easily, but it does come.

You’ll never lose the 15lbs you gained (you’ll gain more weight, actually), but you will try to realize that the number on the scale shouldn’t define you. In fact, you’ll start avoiding scales altogether because fixating on how high the number gets is something you don’t have the brain space for. And speaking of numbers, you’ll learn to embrace leggings and then just stop wearing jeans altogether so you can stop worrying about shopping for the next size up.

Thank you for going to school without opening the Advil bottle.

You’re going to stop being friends with your best friend. I know you wouldn’t believe me if you could read this letter (although, maybe you would actually), but its true. Its the best thing that ever happens to you. Its really hard and terrible when it happens, but it gets better. Eventually. I’m really proud of you for it.

You don’t believe in forever anymore, but you want to. And you can’t decide if you can accurately call yourself a hopeless romantic. You’re pretty cynical about the fate of any kind of relationship – platonic or romantic, though you’ve still never had a boyfriend. But you can’t wait for the day someone proves you wrong.

There was a lot more that I think I planned to say, but what I really want to tell you all comes back to my first point: learning to love yourself is the hardest and best thing you’ll do and it is worth every minute.

Love, Laura

PS. Your hair only gets better and you really kill it in red lipstick.