Mama and the City

Career mama by day, Crayon finder by night.

If I Could Turn Back Time

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In march of this year I had the pleasure to join Jamie of Chosen Chaos in her weekly meme called “If I Could Turn Back Time”.

Now, I got to feature my post on my own blog and link it back to her site which is hosting ALL of the other bloggers in this series. Very clever Jamie!

Here is what I wrote:

If you had the oppor­tu­nity to sit down with your 18 year old self, what would you say to her?


YOU ARE SMART How do I know this? well,

  • You man­aged to suc­ceed and bypass the sta­tis­tics for some­one liv­ing in a dys­func­tional fam­ily (quit school, be part of a gang, do drugs, etc…).
  • Despite the lack of a female role model for wise advice, you suc­cess­fully put men in their places when needed – keep trust­ing your gut feeling!
YOU ARE INDEPENDENT
  • It’s not easy work­ing at a crappy restau­rant in a crappy area when you are 14 at a place where vice, harass­ment and evil is on everyone’s mind.
  • It’s not easy study­ing for exams, doing home­work and get­ting to work on time, every day.
  • You pretty much have to do every­thing for your­self because your fam­ily really doesn’t want to, it sucks, I know, like it’s not already a very busy day in your schedule.
But in the long run you will see that going through all of this empow­ers you and makes you a dif­fi­cult tar­get to those macho guys whose dreams are for you to fol­low their rules, ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Losers!
YOU ARE UNIQUE AND SIMPLE
  • While most of your friends have their fam­i­lies’ help and love, you man­aged to sur­vive in a dys­func­tional house­hold where yelling and cri­tique is the daily motto.
  • While most of your friends have time to rest and do their home­work, you man­age to study on a crowded bus after a very tir­ing long day.
  • While most of your friends have their allowance to spend on a new what­ever, you man­age to save for your next semester’s tuition fee.
YOU ARE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE
  • You don’t like games. This can be a prob­lem when deal­ing with peo­ple who love pol­i­tics – at work, espe­cially. You’ll learn to keep them under control.
  • You are not at all inter­ested in fake or vain friend­ships and because of this you almost don’t have female rela­tion­ships at hand.
  • Your loy­alty is a virtue and will be appre­ci­ated by those who really want to be with you.
There are going to be peo­ple in your future not inter­ested in the same way about you. It will hurt, but let me tell you, it is smart to let them go. Not for them, for you.
YOU ARE PERFECT!
  • Every­thing your mom cri­tiques about you, it’s not true. You are not fat, you are not ugly. You are nor­mal for your age, you are perfect.
  • Every­thing your dad tells you wasn’t good enough, it’s not true. He has this thing for not com­ment­ing about things that meet cri­te­ria. Do not ever take his com­ments per­sonal, it’s his issue not yours. You do good things too. More often than not.
Con­struc­tive crit­i­cism is not based on purely neg­a­tive feed­back. If any­one wants you to lis­ten to any­thing bad about some­thing you did, they should tell you something good as well in exchange. Otherwise, flush it away!
Now, let me tell you a secret, this difficult time of your life that you secretly hate is the one that you will love the most as you grow older. Why? Because you missed this phase of your life. You are too focused on so many things that you are for­get­ting someone very impor­tant, you. Go out! Live! Indulge yourself!

I love you and will always miss you.

 -Your not so young self

XOXO

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