If I Knew Then What I Know Now. A Note To My High school Self (with diary excerpts) (#TheSW30) Day 18

Today’s blogging challenge is to look back and have a conversation with my highschool self.  It is very fortunate for me that I have a very “normal” highschool life.  I was very focused, kept my grades up, planned to go to college, and I had all my life planned out.  I was a very intense highschooler.


Even though I was moderately popular I guess you could say, I was still a little weird, and sometimes an outsider among my friends.  I think back then it used to bother me.  My friends in high school were having sex, really into boys, and doing things that I was very afraid to do.  I just was not that extroverted.  There was a time that I used to resent the way I was.

I find it  funny, because I think it was just meant for me to be a a writer.  I maintained  a dairy from the time I was in highschool until about my first year of college.  And I I saved them.

It amazing me how I write about being called stuck up by the boys in highschool because of my unwillingness to be loose.  And so I wrote this poem at 15 years old to express just how I saw others:

My Poem At age 15. 

This is coming from a friend, I must let you know. 
That Girlfriend You are a Hoe. 
The reason why boys want to tap that a**. 
Is because you do not want the relationship to last. 
They will dis you in public, and think nothing of it. 
And they have you thinking you are all that, when you are just a used up piece of trash. 
You give it up too soon. 
Then they turn, laugh, and call you a fool.  
So what you think they’ll leave their girlfriend for you?
You are just a little tramp they will run to and use. 
No one likes you and talks behind your back. 
And you best believe it girl, that is a fact. 
And just because they act like they want you now,
You wait to other people come around. 
Now you suck his d*** and let him work it all night. 
But other people are calling you a hoe, and you know what? They are right. 

It amazes me how much sense my 15 years old self had.  It seemed like my 15 years old self had more sense that my young 20 year old self.  Because somewhere along the lines I would start to date men that were not good for me and get into bad relationships.  It would seem as if my 15 years old self would need to come back and talk to my young 20 something years old self.  I can recall that when I was in my late teens and early 20’s is the time in which I started going crazy for no reason what so ever.  And my 15 years old self may have been on to something.  If I had remembered this poem, I may have not gotten into a lot of the relationships that I got myself into.

And then I come across another poem that I wrote when I was 16.  It gives an idea that I am the same type of person, even 14 years later.  So determined to finished.  Feeling that I was behind the race when in fact I wasn’t, and beating myself up over the fact that I was not perfect.

Poem Age 16 

I am so confused and isolated inside. 
I feel so lost and it is hard to say why. 
I am in a not in a strange place driving, but it still feels like I’m striving
To get where I want to go. 
But sometimes it seems like I am moving too slow. 
I am trapped and 4 walls are closing in on me. 
I feel I have no friends and all of them are my enemies. 
Their pulling me in all directions, and I hear their words of rejections. 
That is leading down the wrong road, but I keep strong and stay bold.  
There is one thing that I do know, I am going everywhere, but where I want to go. 

When reading this I was a very intense teenager.  I cannot help but to laugh at the theatrics as well as the similarities to myself now.

I think God can speak to people at such a young age.  When you have a calling on your life, God will call out from whatever age you are ready to hear it.  I still feel like I am going slow sometimes.  I still feel like I am not moving toward my destination fast enough, but when I look back on all the things that I have accomplished in my 30 years of living, I realize that this is not true.

I am on the path God created me to be on.  I was also on the right path then.  I would tell my self self more than anything, that it is okay.  I am going to be okay.  I would tell myself not to be afraid to be weird, stand out, or not to get upset because I do not conform to others peoples’s idea of how I am supposed to act.

I learned this lesson as an adult, and it seemed that once I did, I was okay with being me.  But before this time as seen in the second poem, I would beat myself up for reasons I could not put my finger on.  And it was because I was trying to be of the world and not outside of it, and so I felt frustration, because I felt the need to conform to those around me, but also felt the need to be me.

If I could talk to myself back then, I would say.

“You are a star, and you are beautiful.  Who cares if you are dark skinned and you do not fit into the stereotypical view of beauty? Who cares that your mind works different and other people do not understand you? Who cares if you have dreams to go above and beyond what anyone can imagine?  And who cares if you do not want to run around with boys and have sex with them at 15 years old?  It’s okay. Be you, and shine bright like stars were meant to do.”

I would give myself, the self esteem that I needed.  Being an African American female, who has a shapely figure, and who is dark was not always seen as beautiful; I struggled with myself a lot.  If anything I would instill in my head that God created me for a reason.  God does not make mistakes and I am and look exactly the way I am suppose to.  I would tell myself to deal with it and accept it.  If I had known that, I would have saved myself a lot of internal struggle and my need for validation from men in the late teens and early 20’s.

Since I cannot talk to my younger self, I talk to my son all the time.  He is weird like me, and I let him know that not only is this okay, but it is a beautiful thing to stand out.

(Click here and here on my other blogs on being unique and standing out).

This I hope will help him avoid some of the internal struggle I faced as a teen and help him grow into a successful  adults.