7 Things I’d Tell My Depressed 18-Year-Old Self
I wonder if he’d actually listen.
The photo on left was taken the day before my 18th birthday at a Nike shop in downtown Seattle.
To say I look like a completely different person is an understatement. I was skinnier, I had weird-looking square glasses, and a god-awful awful haircut. Not to mention, I’m wearing UGG boots. The photo on the left was from a long time ago.
This was before I went to college, before I became obsessed with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and long before I realized that bleach blonde (the photo on the right) should have been my natural hair color and that my calling was “gentle acts of destruction”.
It’s funny to me because this picture on the left exemplifies everything that I was not. In this picture, I look relatively Stoic, confident in my masculinity, and focused on the future.
Inside, I was scared, painfully insecure, and desperate for attention. I had no idea what I was going to do with the next semester, much less my life.
More than 6 years later, these are the 7 things I’d tell my stubborn younger self in a helpless attempt to save myself from heartbreak, mental illness, and countless hours of aimless struggle.
