Letter to the Past

With the workload that my job has put upon me at the moment, as well as Christmas and family demands my letter-writing has been sadly neglected, so much of this weekend will hopefully be dedicated to rectifying this lapse in literary diligence. On a related topic, this meme which has been recently travelling around, appearing wherever I might see, of people writing a letter to their teenage selves has stimulated my interest until I have finally decided to submit and create my own contribution.

Dear Rabbit,

Hear me out, because I know that name will mean nothing to you at the moment. You will have no idea how you, or we, will acquire it or how much it will come to mean to you. You have no idea how cynically you will come to regard it, even as you treasure and prize it as the core of your still-developing identity. Enough about your little prized nickname however, that is something you will have to discover on your own. There are other things I do want to tell you though, even if it will mean you avoid them and never learn some of the things I have.

First of all those people at school, the ones you hate and despise, and are convinced will never amount to anything. The ones that you have never let a single tear fall for, and vowed that you never will? Well, you managed it. No crying. Apparently you are nearly physically incapable of it. You never let them see anything, and that is where you screwed up on this one. It becomes so ingrained into you to hide what you are feeling that you keep doing it. Lies, deception, masking, shielding, it all becomes part of your life.

In a couple of years you will fall in love for the first time, or something close to it, and then have your heart broken. You will tell no one of this, no one will have the slightest clue what has happened except for the friends who knew you both, and them you will simply avoid. It will also be your first encounter with death. Avoid all of this. Avoid the scars it will bring you, all of them, from a handful on your arms to a mark down the centre of your tongue which is with you years later. Avoid the lot. Do not, ever, talk to a dark-haired girl that you might meet on the train. Never. Just do not do it.

A year after that you will finally escape from the hell that school has gradually been becoming, and move on to college. A few weeks later you will leave your first college having been caught accidentally by a bullet, fortunately little more than a graze, and move to a new college a short time afterwards. Avoid that, being shot hurts. Do not go to a different college simply because people from your school are not going there, the people who tormented you at school will do so anyway until certain things change, and that comes in a few months. Just go to a college where you will not be shot, and may at least have a handful of people who will talk to you.

There is no need to go into what finally happens with your tormentors, though you do not need to be quite as harsh with the first one who comes after you. That was a close call with the police, and you were nearly jailed for excessive force. You do not want to be jailed, and having something like that on your record would mess up a lot of future plans. Be careful. Stop hitting when he is down. Leave it at that. It may save you some trouble with the others as well.

Fortunately after a few more encounters like that they will start to leave you alone, though admittedly you will have added a few more scars to your collection, and ruined a perfectly good coat into the bargain. You will also begin to find it harder to concentrate on your college work, and difficult to see a point in any of it. Stick with it, and actually go to classes. You will pass anyway, as you suspect, but not quite with the marks you were hoping for.

Do not, and I cannot emphasize this enough, go with your supposed friend to meet another friend of his from the airport. She is nothing but trouble. Do not meet her. Do not speak with her. Do not date her. Do not marry her. Leave her be. You want nothing to do with her at all. The only good thing that comes out of ever having met her is your wedding ring, and she steals that when you throw her out. Just buy yourself a red gold ring instead. Marriage is not a good idea.

Once you have struggled through college you will find yourself, suprisingly, accepted into university. This is where everything pays off, all that karma owed to you comes back two-fold, maybe more. Within the first two weeks you will have discovered that relationships do not need to be painful, or even particularly romantic. There are some very friendly girls who you will be living with, and so long as you keep up your end of the bargain that is proposed at the beginning of the year, so will they. Just do not try and have sex with the blonde one, she is very dedicated to her boyfriend, no matter how affectionate and flirty she may be. The two shorter ones are fair game and will be joining you in bed shortly anyway, and there will be plenty of general physical comfort and affection in the house.

At some point in this year someone will introduce you to a hobby called live-action roleplaying. When you go to your first event do not drink that nice guy's bottle of creme de menthe. If you do you will struggle for a long time to suppress a phobia of being touched by anyone male, and for good reason. If you do, then the morning afterwards you will have to go to hospital. The hospital will tell you you have been drugged. You will keep the whole thing quiet for years, too frightened and ashamed to tell anyone and feeling sick any time anyone male so much as shakes your hand.

Oh, a year and nine months later you will discover that you have been part of what could be a bad sitcom plot. Those two, you know the ones, are actually switching around on you. You will discover this when you encounter them both at once. Enjoy it, it will only last a few months but you can get free drinks with those stories for years. Learn to co-ordinate yourself carefully though, otherwise you will just get confused.

I would love to recommend that you do not leave university the first time, and maybe if you have not married then you will not have to, but it may also be that university is not for you. Look into psychology and save yourself a few years of desperately trying to find yourself, meaningless or meaningful relationships, struggling to make ends meet, always falling slightly below expectations and constantly feeling yourself as a dissappointment. Computing is definitely not your field, as you have always suspected, but without a degree you are most likely to end up stuck in it anyway.

Save money, enjoy life, avoid the biggest mistakes I have warned you about if you can but throw yourself into the little ones. You will come to realise that little screw-ups are almost as enjoyable as getting things right. Try not to let your school years destroy all of your confidence, it will save you time in building it up again later, something I have still not managed, your veneer of arrogance will come in useful though so practice that. Do not start smoking, and when driving stay well away from anyone in a business suit and a BMW.

Have fun,
Mr R Rabbit

So there you go. Interesting exercise. I am not quite sure whether I feel better, worse, no different or anything else. It is done now though.