Letter to my younger self

Tiffani,

At the age of fifteen, you think that life has pretty much begun and ended all at once. You fall in love with somebody that you've known for years and he hurts you once, twice, again and again. It's your first love and you don't regret it but you learn to respect yourself. He may think you're boring for not going out on a Friday night like everybody else or a prude for not having sex with him but the moment he ended it with you the second time, it was pretty clear he didn't respect you at all. You may have loved him for some time after and he may have tried and tried to get you back but you weren't going through that, not again. You respected yourself and put your needs above all else, this is what defines you. You learnt that friends are sometimes fickle. That they would rather act like idiots than hang out with you but there are also new friends around every corner and they will show you what real friendship is like, well, for a while at least. You realised that you are smart, being in a class full of people that didn't care like you did about learning and were rewarded by getting moved into a different class even though you didn't care much then, you spend your time doing everything but work but somehow managed to pass with good grades. Also, you learnt that there is more to life than grades, you are not defined by them but people seem to respect you more when they're higher and that's their issue, not yours. You learnt that dating was way too much effort. Boys didn't deserve your time and you learnt some other things, you like girls but you didn't do anything about it, not yet. You learnt that this isn't the beginning or end of your life, you learnt that you don't always know yourself by the age of fifteen, that continues happening through your life whether it's good or bad. You learnt lots at this age but you knew there was far more learning to come. You were strong even when people tried to get you down. You were happy, sad, embarrassed, you hated and loved yourself. You learnt something about who you are that can never be erased. 

Love from, 

a much older but not always wiser version of yourself. 

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Thank you so much for visiting my blog and reading this post. 

I'll be back at the weekend with a blog about my holiday to Venice, I fly out tomorrow.