A Letter, With Love (Full Text)

Dear 16-year-old self:

I want to tell you some silly things, and some serious things, and some sad things. I think it might be better if you know them now. I’m doing this because I want to spare you all the pain you’re about to go through. I know that this is selfish, but I think it’s for the best.

For starters, you’re queer.

I want to let you know that purple was never our color. Don’t worry! It will be all right. Your hair grows back. You will never understand fashion, but eventually you will have style.

I want to tell you that Mom gets ovarian cysts. She spends most of next summer in bed and moaning, and maybe you should learn to cook a little better before that happens. The last time around I almost gave her food poisoning. Remember that you need to cook chicken all the way through. Cut it in the middle to see if it’s done. Paprika is not the same as cayenne. And there’s a reason the bottle for her painkillers says Do Not Mix With Alcohol.

I want to spare you the spring day, senior year, when Kristin laughs at Ellen, and you laugh with her. I want to spare you the guilt you will feel when Ellen steals pills from her sister and just doesn’t come to school. I want to tell you that eventually you’ll forgive yourself for laughing, but I can’t. Not yet.

I want to spare you all the stupid things you’re going to say about other people before you know who you are.

I want to spare you the first six months in the city. You spend them on the hard, narrow mattress you put on the floor of your apartment because you were couldn’t afford a bed, or a couch. I want to let you know that you will eventually buy a gorgeous couch, with real cushions stuffed with feathers instead of foam.

Depression sucks. You’ll get over it. Take it from someone who knows.

I want to spare you crying on the platform of the A-line subway on that winter morning the day Dad tells you not to come home for Christmas any more. He says that he’ll never buy you a gift again. (He’s lying.)

After that, I want to warn you that Dad has been reading your email. Soon he will confront you. Any day now. He’s a time bomb in the form of a tiny, mustached Irish man.

I want to let you know that Dad will never get any bigger. He will always stay that size.

I want to spare you that last family photo, the one where our brother has his arm around you and he is glaring, you are crying, your parents are smiling on either side. People shouldn’t put holidays like that on film.

When you move to the city for good, you’ll date a string of people. None of them will be good for you. You will learn to eat sushi and give head. Eventually you will fall in love with a girl named Marie.

Bad idea.

To put it bluntly, she’s an evil bitch. She’s going to accuse you of having multiple personality disorder. She’s going to make you feel like a child, and sometimes she’ll throw her shoes at your back. And when you finally challenge her to admit her narcissistic insanity, she’s going to laugh in your face. And still, you will love her.

I want to spare you seeing Marie put her pink plastic purse on her shoulder and walk out. I want to spare you all the clumsy awkward ugliness of that moment. And I want to spare you the even more ugly moment three days later, when you find out she’s on a plane to Memphis and you realize she won’t be coming back.

Things will be very hard, for a while.

That fall, I will warn you that you need to be at the swanky concert you were invited to by accident when you were still dating her. You know the one. The invitation is under your bed. I know you’re thinking about not going, because Marie is back in the city and will be performing and it wrenches at you to think of seeing her, makes you feel like there are needles under your fingertips being heated by her Zippo. But you need to go. I almost missed it the last time around. I almost backed out at the very last second.

I’m not telling you this because it will be a good concert. It will be awful. Marie’s clarinet will squeak and you will wonder how you ever managed to love her. Your nails will tear on the plush cushion of your seat.

But at the concert’s intermission you will go to the red and gold lobby. You will scuff your feet on the brocade carpet and put your hands deep in your pockets, and order a soda water from the girl behind the bar. She will smile, and her smile will make you turn raspberry red and grin.

Her name is Claire. She lives in Washington Heights, and grew up in Boston. She’s two months, two weeks, and two days older than you, she loves Groucho Marx, orange shoes, flavored lipgloss, and sailing. She has a basil plant growing on her balcony that makes her bedroom in the summer smell as spicy as her skin. You won’t learn all of this that night, but soon you’ll learn it.

When you meet Claire you’ll think she’s frightening, far too beautiful. You’re going to curl inside yourself like a fuzzy ball of baby animal. But despite what you think, you will charm her. She will take you home that night. In her kitchen, she will take a gerber daisy from a pot and run the thin sticky end of it, dripping, along the line of your neck. You will unfold like the bud of a gardenia. She will smile at you and dare you, oh god, dare you to chase her into the bedroom, taking off down the hallway with the soles of her bare feet flashing. You will leave your collared shirt on her floor like a crumpled cotton husk.

She will make you love your breasts. With her mouth she will teach you your own curving trajectory. You’ll hold your hand over your forearm where she kisses you and you’ll feel your skin burning.

You will think the world is ending. It isn’t. Trust me.

And you’ll cry, pathetically, again. And magically, she will hold you while you cry.

Maybe I was wrong, before. Maybe you shouldn’t be spared these things. You would never have grown up otherwise, or found Claire, or done any work that was any good at all. You would never have learned to speak eloquently upon the skill and craft of suffering.

But I do want to spare you, all the same. I can’t help how much my heart aches. For you.

I want you to know that people do eventually think you’re funny. Claire thinks you are hilarious, and you will find you love the way she laughs. I want you to hurry up and grow, so you can meet her. She will make you laugh every single day.

You do eventually learn to dance in the daylight. You do grow into your skin and your hips and your too-long limbs. You are eventually loved.

And you do figure yourself out, just a little bit. I want you to know that it’s going to be all right.

Love,

Your 28-year-old self