Toooo Meeeee!

Our wonderfully talented and witty friend and fellow blogger JennyMac shares my love of birthdays and all of the celebration and reflection that comes with making another trip around the sun.  Inspired by her touchingly hilarious birthday post, I am writing a letter to my much younger self on the almost-eve of my 28th birthday.

Dear little Leah,

You are a strange bird and that won’t ever change, but you will always have people in your life who appreciate your quirks, your perspective, and your enthusiasm.  It is perfectly fine to spend a great deal of your young years with books and trees and imaginary friends – you will have plenty of human friends, and will enjoy their company, but the time you spend alone is never dull – you are constantly learning, exploring, creating, and this will serve you well in years to come.

You are, and always will be, a pacifist by nature.  But remember in 5th grade when your friend tried to teach you the art of the quick comeback? You should pay more attention to her advice, and practice.  Because in middle school there will be some Mean Girls, and they will taunt you on the school bus and even go so far as to put gum in your hair.  (Feel that shock and outrage?  Use it to speak up!) You know you are way more awesome than those girls, so while their insults do not deeply affect you, just think of the satisfaction you could have from putting those girls in their place by speaking a piece of your mind.

And you have quite the intelligent and probing mind, which will sometimes frustrate your parents, as you ruthlessly question their every response – especially those of the “no” and “because I said so” variety.  Give them a little break once in a while – I know you think you are the most awesome Miss Smartypants ever, and can talk circles around anyone who dares to prevent you from getting your way, but they actually do know a thing or two that you haven’t figured out yet, and you won’t realize this until around age 25.  At which point you will start to feel bad for some of the grief you have caused them.

Although, speaking of grief, that time they ground you for an entire month for getting home late from the Alanis concert, even though you called to tell them that James had locked his keys in the car, and even though James’ mom called to verify the verity of the situation, and even though you REALLY WERE locked out of the car, and it totally sucked, and you were stuck in a sketchy parking lot downtown, and even though your parents still, to this day, don’t believe you were locked out of the car and scared of the drunk partiers and homeless men and crackheads and AAA never showed up and finally a policeman got the car unlocked with a little jimmy device, even in spite of all of that, the concert was still totally worth it and you should still go!  Oh, and telling your folks that you have play rehearsal every Saturday that month you’re grounded is a spectacular idea, because they will never find out that really you were hanging out with your friends all day, and you will only feel a little bit bad for lying to them.

In retrospect, you make some choices (especially during your last year of high school and first year of college) which could easily have become Very Bad Situations… but they don’t, you lucky gal!  So while you don’t have any regrets, and actually had quite a lot of fun, you sometimes wonder how you would feel if your own children were to make those choices.  And you don’t think you would like that very much.  But we still have some time to work through that, as kiddos are in the future for both of us.

Oh, and deciding at the last minute to go to China, Tibet, India, and Nepal for your year abroad instead of Senegal is a truly great decision on your part!  Way to be impulsive and listen to your heart! (You’re pretty good at that, even if you sometimes second-guess yourself.)  While you’ll never know what might have happened if you had gone to Senegal, you will learn that the university there shut down for a full semester due to a teacher strike, so that would have interfered with your early graduation plans.   And besides, you have an amazing, transformative time in Asia and develop a deep love for the Chinese, Tibetan, Indian, and Nepalese cultures.  And you will meet lots of awesome people and you will even learn to speak Mandarin fairly well, which becomes your favorite party trick.

Your love life will be a little complicated for a few years in your early 20s, but there will be lots of special times, and just a few hard ones, and you’ll learn a lot about yourself, what you want, and how much you are willing to compromise (not much, missy!) .    And you will completely surprise yourself by going on Match.com and finding a cute guy who you quickly fall head over heels for, although you will spend the first year and a half insisting this is just a short-term relationship, even after you guys move in together. (Seriously, Leah, who do you think you’re fooling?  Only yourself.)  Eventually you’ll come to your senses and surrender to the notion that maybe you found yourself someone you really do want to spend the rest of your life with.  Although I’m sure Mark would appreciate it if you could admit that a little bit sooner.  Or a lot bit sooner.  It’s okay to fall in love more than once, and it’s also okay to change your plans in life.  You don’t have to stick to what you said you wanted to do when you were 5 or 15 or 22, and some things you want won’t change.  Lucky for you, you found yourself a partner who wants a lot of those same things – and goes after them!  You are like the coolest dream team ever. Goooo LeahandMark.com!

And after 28 years of mostly ups and some downs, you are more excited than ever for what’s to come.  You aren’t sure exactly what’s coming, but it will be full of awesomeness because each year you get better and better at finding amazing opportunities and expanding your joy.  And you’ll learn that being your best means being happy more than anything else.  So don’t worry about being smart or amusing or helpful – you already are!  Make choices that make you happy and things will fall into place.

Go shine your light and blow out some candles.

Love,

Leah, age 28