Dear 16-Year-Old Me,
Experience is worth a lot; even if things don't turn out the way you plan or expect. By 16 you have had many experiences: sex, overseas travel, exams, friendship-fallouts, fights, tears, enemies, best friends, love, hate, family, and boyfriends. Don't despair over the boyfriend thing, those hit-and-misses are all about that experience thing. The next one (and the next almost-four years of your life) will be a learning experience, even if it does leave you broken-hearted, dispirited, and a little lost. Trust me, it gets better and it leads you to something much greater than you think. I bet you cannot imagine that in 4-5 years time that you will be attending women in childbirth and witnessing the next generation taking their first breaths!
One thing you must remember, 16-year-old me, is that you are a young woman - one that shouldn't howl about the unfairness of things outside your control. That kind of tantrum is really only for toddlers, even if the teenage years are an extension of the boundary-pushing of the toddler ones. Embrace what you can control, and be calm and level-headed when things outside of that come into play. You are very resilient and - on occasions - wise.
That girl you're friends with, the one no one wants to be friends with will cause you a lot of trouble. A few friendships will end and your trust will completely be shattered at least for now. Remember MTV's Daria? You will be a feistier version of her, misanthropy non-withstanding. You will stop thinking of your former classmates as morons - well, most of them anyway.
Your best friend is still your best friend. Sure, you might not like her current friends and hate seeing her pushed around by them, but she will come into her own. You know you have a kindred spirit in her, your soul-sister, the pea-in-the-pod. No matter what, you will always have at least one friend and she is worth more than all the materialistic bullshit.
You will meet some more very dear friends through your future experiences. You can rely on them too.
Remember what I said about things getting better? That counts for the boyfriend-thing too. He is intelligent, mature, and off-beat. He satisfies all your intellectual curiosities as well as the physical ones. Well worth all the derision and the cretins found on internet dating sites.
Keep dreaming, keep your ground, and don't forsake your intelligence and wit. Also, people don't hate you as much as you think they do. Just stop worrying about what they think and focus on yourself. In the not-very-distant future you will be a uni graduate, working in a field that you have grown to love, and be embarking on graduate studies - everything you were dreaming of back when you were a child, just not in the area you expect! You have some very dear friends, and someone special just waiting for you to meet.
Love,
You-At-24-Years-of-Age.
