Thirty-Two-Year-Old Me Writes to Sixteen-Year-Old Me
A love letter to sixteen-year-old me
Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Me,
I turned thirty-two this year. You are half my age now. I am twice your age. Crazy, right?
I know you’ve already seen 13 Going on 30. I know you loved that film. You were shocked to discover that Jenna was thirty in that film and still unmarried. You said you’d want to be married by 26 and already have kids by 30. I know you think Thirty sounds so mature, so put-together and grown-up. Thirty sounds so cool.
Well, get this: We had 30s all wrong.
You may be wondering: why am I even writing to you? We can’t turn back time; nothing can reverse whatever’s already been done. We cannot exist simultaneously unless we’re in some kind of multiverse. Past me is in the past. Present me is here, drudging through the trials of adulthood. You will derive no benefit from whatever I say.
Well, maybe this letter isn’t for you. Maybe, this is for me, trying to make sense of the sixteen years past. Or for some other sixteen-year-old girl wondering what life has in store for her. Maybe, she’s dreaming big dreams but has no idea how to make them happen. Maybe, she’s also growing up and just starting to find her way. Maybe this will be helpful.
This is a list of the life about to come to you, starting at sixteen, where you are now. Each age is a lesson I’ve learned, mostly the hard way. You can stop reading if you’d rather not read the spoilers, but I know you—you like spoilers, you like reading the ends of book chapters to see what would happen next, to see if anything exciting is coming up. Well, brace yourself, you’re in for a ride.
16. You will get heartbroken, and it will be horrible. You will discover that first love doesn’t always last forever, and it doesn’t need to. You will also learn, the hard way, I’m afraid, that cheaters should go to hell. But you will also find that heartbreak is survivable. Love can be good, even if it has to end.
17. You are not as smart as you thought, and it will hurt your self-esteem. You’re used to being the best and coming up with the best. Falling short of that will be painful for you, but it will also be incredibly humbling. More importantly, you will see that that’s okay, that college is a time to find out who you are beyond the grades and accomplishments.
18. You will grapple with overwhelming uncertainty. You will start to question the path you chose for yourself. You are horrified that you may have made a terrible mistake. You begin to consider other possibilities, even switching gears altogether. You don’t push through with that though, and I honestly can’t say what would happen had you changed course, but the struggle to do so was perspective-widening for you—you learn that there’s more than one way available, and you need not be constrained by the path you set for yourself.
19. You will find you are capable of forgiving. You will believe in second chances. You don’t know if it will end well (sad spoiler alert: it doesn’t), but you allowed yourself to stretch your capacity to love.
20. You will finish something you never thought you could, not for any lack of skill, but because you realized it’s not something you wanted in the first place. And with that, you learn that life is more than finishing degrees or accomplishing awards; life is about knowing yourself a bit more, finding out what you want, and finding ways to chase that.
21. You will enter the second-best phase of your education (high school will always be the best, but you’re done with that by now.). You’ll be excited to go back to class, learn in a classroom, and have school fairs and org events attend. You’ll realize how much you enjoy the familiar environment of lecture halls and libraries. Oh, and you’ll start a new blog, too! A new home for your stories and musings. Some of these will be shared and reshared multiple times, in places you never knew your words could reach. It’s empowering—to know that people are listening to your stories.
22. You will get your heart broken. Yes. Again. I’m sorry. But this time, you learn you should not put up with anything less than you deserve. Do not worry about what it was or what it could have been. If it’s not bringing you the joy you deserve, it’s okay to let it go. You will be fine. You will get better.
23. You will learn calligraphy and brush lettering. You will be horrible at it at first, as all beginners are, but then you get better, and better, and better. Soon enough you will have enough skill to embellish birthday cards and to give calligraphy quotes as gifts. You will amass more notebooks and brush pens than you know what to do with, and you’ll love it. You’ll find it’s possible to discover new parts of yourself—talents, hobbies, quirks— unknowns waiting to be known.
24. You will fall in love again, and this person will adore you. It will be a classic friends-to-lovers story, the kind you’ve always enjoyed. You will not see love coming, which is sometimes the best way to find love. He will love you as you are, even with the parts you may not like about yourself, and he will not ask you to change a thing. He will celebrate everything you are. He will not ask you to be more than you are, and will never make you feel like you’re too much to handle. He has the most beautiful mind and the deepest and sincerest of hearts.
25. You will find a best friend. You’ve never had one and have already accepted that you probably never will. But you will discover that best friends don’t always come from growing up together. Best friends come from people you choose to spend your time with and share your life with. You can go through life for years without ever knowing them, but once you find your best friend, you can no longer imagine a life without them.
26. You’ll accomplish three remarkable feats this year: 1) Graduating med school; 2) passing medical board exams; and 3) finishing pre-residency—all within a few months. The change will feel like going full speed on the highway: the ride will make you dizzy, the twists and turns will catch you off-guard, your surroundings will be blurry, and you won’t have much time to enjoy the view, anyway. But believe me, even when it doesn’t feel like it, you’re going somewhere.
27. You’re now a first-year resident, with a license number to sign your entries with. The doctorhood will start to feel real and overwhelming. You realize the weight of a stethoscope, of the responsibility of identifying what’s wrong with a patient, of knowing what you need to do, of doing what needs to be done. It’s a year of finding a sweet spot between improving what you know and being paralyzed by how much you don’t know. You will be exhausted, both from the overnight shifts and the burden of being referred for everything—for patients who are short of oxygen, for those who lose consciousness, for temperatures that spike during blood transfusion, for hearts that beat too slow or too fast, or even not at all.
28. You will experience what few people expect to experience in their lifetime — a global pandemic. This year, COVID-19 will wreak havoc and disrupt our (already) unpredictable yet seemingly streamlined lives. Duty schedules and workflows will be overhauled, and the ever-changing policies will not always feel fair. Tensions will rise and uncertainties will loom over everyone, and still—and you must give yourself credit for this—you will come in every day. You will choose to report to work and make the best of what anyone can make of a broken system.
29. You will be burned out, or at least, realize that the weeks and months of despondency and lack of motivation are elements of burnout. You learn that burnout is insidious in how it plagues its victims. Burnout allows you to come to work, get the job done, and make everything seem well, without realizing that you’re doing it all with a dimmer light. As a friend of ours will describe it, you will look like you’re walking with a cloud above your head, the clouds heavy with rain, but steadfastly holding on to the weight. Burnout is the curse that comes with resiliency. You will pull through, and in the process, you learn to be more aware of your emotions. Burnout will come back, but at least now, you can call it by its name.
30. You will start rediscovering yourself. Your life will now sing to the tune of “What else can I do?” from Encanto. You take a much-needed reprieve from a life track that always had goalposts. You find that being on a pre-planned track can also wear us out. So this year, you try new things—you explore hospital duties, event organizing, teaching, and research work. You jump back into activities you love, too. You join a book club. You submit essays for publication. You apply for a writing workshop. The uncertainty and haphazardness of it all will worry you sometimes, but in hindsight, you will find it most liberating to allow yourself to be.
31. This year, you jump back into the track you laid out for yourself. You’ve always been fascinated with endocrinology, and the beauty of the balance it strives to achieve, at least among hormones. So, you go into fellowship training, but as much as you’ve always wanted it, its rigors will still startle you as you find your footing again. Once more, you’ll be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. You will be uncomfortable with the sensation of always being On; and not having the option of a Shut Down or Restart button. You will be frustrated with yourself, always feeling wanting in skill or performance. Aside from the challenges of training, life will also throw you curveballs. Loved ones (yes, plural) will get admitted, and you will be overcome by the weight of being a doctor in the family, of how much people turn to you for your opinion, your recommendation, and even your decisions. At the same time that you struggle with this density, you also grapple with your powerlessness, how death and disease will meddle and will sometimes triumph, despite your best efforts. And yes, grief will visit again, after a long hiatus of making you believe you already know all there is to know about death and mortality. Grief will remind you of the depth and persistence of love; and how love will assert itself in the space that grief leaves behind.
32. And now, sixteen years after your sixteenth birthday, fortunately, and unfortunately, you’re still getting to know who you are. You’re older and wiser, even when you still have much of life to figure out. You’re many leagues more confident in how you look and what you do, while also being struck by insecurity and uncertainty. And that’s okay. Each stage of life will come with obstacles you must face for the first time, and each time it feels like you’re doing it all wrong. You don’t have to have it all figured out, not at sixteen and not even at thirty-two.
Fret not of the should-haves, the must-haves, and the could-haves of life. There will be pain and regret just as certain as there will be triumph and laughter. I encourage you to continue wandering instead of chasing, to find yourself and your joy. It’s not easy, and unfortunately, I have no real instructions to give, but I hope you find comfort that the past sixteen years, all came together eventually, not neatly nor perfectly, but okay — it all turned out okay. Okay can easily be labeled lukewarm and mediocre, even when okay, most of the time, is more than enough. It means so much to say that you’re okay.
So, as you face the next years of your life, let me assure you now: You’re okay. Life will be hard. Life will be glorious. Life will teach and hurt and disappoint in the same breath that it celebrates and sings and laughs. And through it all, you will be okay.
