Dear my 14 year old self

Dear my 14 year old self,

Moving to secondary school has been hard.  Primary school wasn’t easy and you were so determined to go to the local private school, it was your escape from everything negative about school.  An opportunity to enjoy learning without punishment from your peers.  But the fees were too high and you didn’t get a scholarship.  You should know that even at the age of 27 you won’t have confessed to your parent’s that you think the reason you didn’t get a bursary is because you didn’t check the back page of the maths paper and so missed a heap of questions.  Just to re-assure you though, you never make that mistake again.

Do you remember sitting in IT with James Davies talking about what your future looked like?  Telling him how you were going to get away from the life you knew.  How you are going to start afresh, be successful and not come home until you can drive past all those people that spent so much time and energy in putting you down and show them how wrong they were, about everything.  You spoke with such confidence, not because you believe it is possible but because you know the daydream so intimately.  The daydream where you get to feel smug and superior to all the popular kids from school.  You know the ones who kick mud up your uniform, take the piss out of your polished English {because not speaking slang is a crime} and who make you feel stupid for wanting to learn, for being capable of learning.

Sometimes when you walk down the stairs in the quiet during lessons, you pause and look longingly at the large single-pane glass windows.  You wonder how much force you might have to trip with to penetrate the glass.  At night you try to hold your breath for as long as possible…longer than is possible.  Please don’t cry, don’t feel ashamed.  I know how much it hurts.  The pain of trying to figure out who you are as well as wishing you were who they want you to be…whoever that is.

It’ll be ok.  You see you do escape.  Today I we got my second promotion in 4.5 years.  We got a bonus that means we can buy new sofas for the house that we own.  Plus a little payrise which should help us take a bit of reduced-pay time off work.  Friday is our last day in the office {one of those big shiny glass offices in central London that you dreamt of working in when visiting in 2000} as we start maternity leave, so don’t live in fear of infertility because you manage to kick it’s ass!

Oh and those girls who said all that stuff…they add you on facebook.  They update their status’ worried about the world that their children are going to live in.  They are hopeful that their family is kind, considerate and well spoken…everything you are now, everything that they mock you for.  Inbetween the exchanges there is a silent recognition that they were wrong about you and so many other things {including the bleached little strips of hair that used to dangle in their face}.

Kid, we did good.  You’re going to do good…