There's Always Next Year

Every year, I write a letter to myself on December 31 using FutureMe, and set it so that I'll receive it in exactly one year. It's my favorite part of every holiday season -- having an email from my past self pop up in my inbox, opening it to read about everything I'd set out to do (and mostly failed, because asi es la vida). 2018 Me wanted a six-pack. 2019 Me was still convinced Drake was cool. This year, I created a literal 2023 Bingo Card for all the chaos I'm hoping will ensue in the next six months.

I figured we could look through the letter I received this year (and wrote in 2021) and laugh at how nothing and everything has changed. 

"The first year I got a letter from the past I had a little bit of a mental breakdown, but maybe today, you'll have a more... heartwarming reaction."

False. I had a mental breakdown this year, too. Because technically, I realized 2022 was rushing right by me in November, when I hit my Goodreads goal. And in my best friend's car (because I still can't drive), when I was told to get my feet off the dash, and I realized how mature we were really getting. But mostly, I'm too busy color-coordinating my planner to realize that whole years are just...happening, so receiving letters from a version of myself that didn't know the difference between its and it's is always going to be jarring. The first person in our friend group turned 18 in January, and it almost seemed like a glitch in the matrix. Shouldn't someone have stopped us before we got here? This can't be legal, right?

"Anyway, I guess by the time you'll be reading this, you will have gotten into college."

Also false. By December 31, 2022, I was knee-deep in supplementals and buying skincare products from Ulta with my Dad's credit card as a coping mechanism. I had procrastinated finishing so many applications that one of my friends refused to call me back until I submitted "at least one". And so, left locked in my room like Rapunzel with nothing else to entertain me, I spiraled down a YouTube rabbit hole of watching "COLLEGE DECISION REACTIONS 2022 | ivies, T20s, UCs, USC, Berkeley, etc. | i applied to 25 schoools...." videos. I learned nothing important, but got to watch some high schoolers cry way more photogenically than I ever could.

"I remember freshman year, when I was begging for the day I could move away to college and not have my sister pounding down my door when she ran out of sunscreen. But now, the fact that by the time you read this, you'll have five months left of senior year in this messed up little high school, breaks my heart. Who woulda thunk it."

Well, this one is true. I hope nobody is offended that I called Troy High "messed up", but for the record, I was mostly talking about the freshman. I like the rest of you guys. 

"It's hard to imagine that this may be the last year for a while (or maybe ever) that I have a room all to myself."

Oh no, don't remind me. I don't know how I can wake up every morning and not be greeted by my giant book collection. Or the pictures of me at Fifth Grade Camp. Or my first grade Kumon trophy that broke in two after I dropped it in my kitchen because I thought I saw a spider (I didn't). Or the Rubik's Cube I learned to solve in the sixth grade because I refused to be one-upped by my five-year-old cousin. Especially not after he beat me at chess. 

The other day, my World History teacher was telling us about how, when we get to college, the amount of stupidly random things we will have to do to keep our dorms/apartments running will surprise us. We have to buy toilet paper? And the laundry doesn't just...get done by itself? And I can't spend fifty bucks on books anymore because turns out my job only pays fourteen dollars an hour? In the past few months, I have come to appreciate how much my parents juggle so effortlessly -- I sometimes feel like I'm living in the Weasley household, with the fridge magically restocking itself and everything always being there exactly when I need it. I only have eight months of that left. 

"And as for books to read: A Little Life, Less, Parable of the Sower, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." 

Did not read a single one of those. Oh well; there's always next year, right? Maybe finally getting to me TBR can be my personal goal for this semester. Either that, or taking an absurd amount of pictures to commemorate my final six months here. If I'm not perpetually running out of storage, I'm sure I'm doing it wrong.