To the Girl I Used to Be:

Dear child,

It's been a while. I know how much you've been struggling. Remember that one elementary school activity where you were asked to write a bunch of questions for your older self? Well, I may not be able to answer all of them because you still have a lot of life to live, and honestly nothing too big has actually happened.

Your first question was: "Do we end up in a better situation than what is already at home?" The answer, to put it simply, is yes. I don't want to share too much, but your teenage years were definitely the toughest on you. Getting adopted at the age of fourteen was only a small part of it.

Your second question was: "What is our most current dream job?" The answer to this one? Our most current dream job is to be famous within music, which goes hand-in-hand with your third question. "Did we ever meet our goal? Sadly, not yet. We ended up getting discouraged more than once by our own family. Our parents said that we couldn't sing, and you already felt like you were a bad dancer. We have gotten compliments from other people though.

Currently, we have seven subscribers on YouTube. We're too busy working as a cook for Disney World in Florida to add any good experience to the channel, but we still write song lyrics and we have quite a few unfinished writing projects. No, we haven't become famous, we don't get recognized like we hoped, our signature is too long to sign autographs anyways. To be honest, I'm answering these questions because we need a more solid plan. We were always told how to find our end goal, but we were never shown where or how to start.

Now we're stuck with a job that was only a small hobby, the only reason we like the line of work is because of the people we've met along the journey of getting older. Becoming an adult hit us like a thousand trucks colliding. It has been coming way too fast. I mean, we'll be twenty-two before we even get to publish a true song. An actual song with background music, and not just your wavering voice.

So, in reality there is not a lot too share. I will say that the decisions we've made about people we've hung out with was not our best judgement. Back when we were still the quiet girl in the front row of the class we were better at knowing the behind-the-scenes of a person's smile, tears, and laugh. Now we can only identify if someone is broken or not, and if they're hiding their true feelings.

Anyways, I should probably bring this letter to a close. Stay tough, Little One. We've come so far, and I promise we'll be going a lot farther.

With best regards,

Your older self

P.S. You should probably take up journaling again, it might help. Though, writing in a journal about your life has become a lot harder than you used to do. You should also start a photo album, but I know you might not have time for that. Plus, you aren't photogenic.