Dear Nineteen

Two years ago when I wrote "Dear Seventeen," I had no idea how much it would change my life. I specifically left it pretty open-ended - room for dreaming and growing and being my own spontaneous self. And that year really changed me. 18 was good too, and so very difficult, but it meant a lot to me. I am surprised by all that it means to me to have another birthday this year; and so, I am only a little scared to write this. It hurts - in the best way.

Dear Nineteen,

Do you remember the night you danced so hard you started crying and laughing and you spread out on your bedroom floor wondering how you could feel so much at once?
That's you. You found something sacred in that: you found something holy this year. Don't let it go.
I am utterly overwhelmed this morning at all the layers that make you human. You are all that you are and all you have been. You are every childhood art project and every time you scraped your knee. You are playdates and sleepovers and pretending with friends. You are tree climbing and playground romances and melting summer ice cream cones. First bike rides and dress-up clothes, favorite movies and family recipes, library trips, middle school summers. You are morning coffee and weekend waffles and professional dressing room dancer. You are pillow forts and pre-teen crushes. You are every night you spent crying and every time you stopped to laugh. First loves, first kiss, first heartbreak. You are bedmates with brokenness yet a lover of romance. You are the wisdom of the hurt you've known and you are still the innocence of being young. And in that contradiction is the ability to live this year as only you can.
You are in a different kind of youth now, one defined by all the rosiness of childhood but also freckled with freedom. A youth still wholly young but also on the cusp of a new decade. This is your last year to be a teenager; live it well, cry harder, love harder. Don't spoil it; don't let the youth who ache to grow up make you forget what it means to be young. Too many are itching to grow out of these years and forget that they are nothing but a gift.
You won't always have your shit together and that's okay. You will be a mess sometimes and not know what you want or who you want or where exactly you are going. But I hope you are content to simply enjoy all of it as it comes. Be content just to be. Be patient with yourself, you are still rebuilding your ability to trust that has been shattered far too many times. You can sit and just be - hands and heart open. You are growing and existing and sometimes that is enough.
Spend less time getting ready and more time exploring. Take pictures of pretty things and ugly things and lovely things and people. Let people teach you. Hold hands with strangers. Tell them you love them; yes, tell him! You have only right now. Scream lyrics to shitty songs and stop apologizing for what you love, for what you are. Own your womanhood, your sexuality, your body - Eighteen took a piece of that from you but you are reclaiming yourself with all the power of a wildfire. Run more, run wildly, blindly, screaming, smiling. Let those wild bursts of red-orange emotion rip freely through your body. Cry even better than you learned how in your last year. Laugh every day, until your ribs are shaking and your stomach aching. Seek the ocean when you need her, swim naked often; spend time in the rich dirt of the planet, in nature, take care of Mother Earth. Find people who are passionate about the same things. Dance with them. Get naked more. Smoke a few more cigarettes and keep smiling in the subway when that really good song comes on. Rejoice in your holiness - you are infinite. Eat things that are good for your soul, eat chocolate, drink coffee. Take care of yourself. Have more picnics with beautiful people - beautiful for who they are and what they love and the words they say. Stop wasting your time with those who will never want to understand everything you are. No one can really; learn to understand yourself. Keep uncovering parts of you that are surprising, scary, lovely; don't be afraid to grow into every part of yourself. Leave your heart open to surprises; stay soft - your strength is in your ability to be vulnerable. Have more coffee-fueled midnight painting sessions. Write everyday. Create even when you do nothing - you are creating within. Meditate, slow down, don't rush.
Be present in every moment with every ounce of who you are. Bring every part of you to the present, each memory and lover and broken heart, let it bubble just below your skin with all the love and energy of a well-lived life. Live with every piece of who you are fully present, at all times. Exist, evolve, love, break, cry, grow again - but more. Live each moment like it's all the passion of a teenage summer. Love with all you can give. Your love will come back to you as much as you give it to others. Take care of yourself. Trust yourself. Don't be afraid of being too much for some people. You don't have to be everyone's favorite and most of the time you probably won't be. Don't water down who you are or change what you want in fear of the response. People will tell you that some of these dreams are too big and they probably are - but what would we be if not for our dreams? Don't dim your everbright soul for people who need sunglasses. Own your wildness, may it grow even wilder.
Take all your healing, and keep living it. No one can take it away from you.
To Eighteen: It's hard to say goodbye because I am in utter awe of what you gave me.
Last year's birthday hurt a lot. A year ago, you seemed wildly different. Turning eighteen was clouded in fear and confusion and a mindstate of survival. Homelife was absolutely wrecked and you rarely knew where you would sleep - if you could even sleep well. Your body took a toll: eighteen took the softness from your bones, the hair from your head, the liveliness from your face - and then gave it all back to you at the end of yourself. Your heart shattered in the deepest kind of way - and you are healing still. You have amazed me with your ability to recover, but also to flourish out all of that. You learned what it means to cry well. You danced, really danced, as if your soul was leaving this world. You began to understand the reward of trusting yourself in dark moments; even when you felt like you couldn't recognize yourself. You lived on your own for the first time, really and truly alone. You dreamed things that terrified you - and you watched those dreams fall apart. But you held the pieces closely and rebuilt them into something even more beautiful. You had an undying vision to redefine home, what it meant to you, and you have - in more ways than one.

Keep dreaming, loving, hoping, chasing - running wildly into the future with every piece of who you are, who you were, and everything you will be.

Dearest Nineteen,
Don't let me down.

- Z.