Senior Moments: Letters to Myself

Not too long after this column publishes, I will be turning 18. In an inconceivably short amount of time, I’ll be able to register to vote, buy a lottery ticket or get a tattoo if I so wanted. Turning 18 is turning out to be quite a surreal experience. If I close my eyes, I can relive memories from ages ago, where a grade-school me felt my older teenage years were so far away, they would surely never come. It was impossible to picture myself in a way that wasn’t exactly the way I was existing in that moment. The person I was at that age wasn’t compatible with an older version who had a cell phone and a car and went to college classes at all times of the day.

The first time the idea I wasn’t going to be a kid forever really hit me was around my thirteenth birthday. I remember sitting in my room at midnight and being deeply affected by the fact I was now a teenager. I could check out books from the teen section of the library and watch PG-13 movies. I remember feeling the need to commemorate the moment. I pulled pages out of my English notebook and snuck out of my room to steal an envelope from the kitchen. I think I spent the next hour writing a letter to my future self, then hid it in a box under my bed. It’s truly a miracle the letter ever saw the light of day again.

Right now, I’m sitting next to a stack of five white envelopes. The one on top is dated Feb. 4, 2017, and is addressed to me in pencil and labeled with instructions to open it on my eighteenth birthday. Everything on the envelope is written in cursive with an excessive amount of decorative flourishes. It’s funny the way I can see myself growing up by just looking at the front of the envelopes. The one from 2018 is addressed in purple pen, 2019 has my name written across it in a calligraphy cursive I’d just learned to do, and 2020 features a round print in pencil. I must have been lazy in 2021 because I didn’t even put my name on the front, just the date in the corner with black pen. I’m impressed I managed to write a letter each year, even if half of them are dated up to 20 days after my birthday. Honestly, if at least a couple hadn’t been written late, it wouldn’t have been an accurate representation of me as a person.

I have no idea what’s in these letters — not even the one I wrote just last year. That must be one of the benefits of writing them all well past midnight: having no real recollection of those moments that live just between awake and asleep. I’m terrified to read them, because I’m sure they have questions a younger me expected answers to. What if I don’t have them? Whatever is in the letters, I’m grateful to my younger self for writing them. I can’t think of a better way to begin my years as an adult than to revisit the years that got me here.

Mia Timlin is a senior at Notre Dame Regional High School. She's lived in Cape Girardeau for five years and loves reading, dancing, watching movies and listening to music by the Beatles.