Dear Amy at 15,
This is it – your first high school relationship. It’s an odd thought, but it really shouldn’t have been. There was this odd back and forth between us and this guy that we refer to as LG. Basically, he says that he would never get another person to ask someone out for him, then some dude asks us out for him, we don’t believe this random person, and then turns out he’s okay with it in either case. We talk it over with LG, but before we decide one way or another our youngest sister interrupts us and we throw a rock at her… which of course goes through the window and we’re grounded. Great.
Come December we’ve done our best to avoid the whole awkward situation and there’s someone else. It’s not 100% on our radar, but on the last day of school before winter break we get kissed. Super cool in our books. Then the same guy, L, asks us out over break and we return to school with a bunch of people asking if we are dating. It’s a weird concept for us, and it will be a bit awkward, but it works out – sort of. Lots of good and bad, some firsts, and some things best forgotten. Eventually we break up with him via an oragami folded note that is written in pink ink; we don’t even hand it to him, our friend hands it to his brother who hands it to him. Why do people start dating at such a young age… the drama in this note along is making me shake my head, let alone all the other stuff that goes on between us and L over the next handful of years.
I could warn you about everything, but we wouldn’t be who we are now without going through it all. It’s a lot for us to handle at times and it’s going to hit a peak next year that I don’t think I could talk myself out of. Everything is irrational and feels like the heat of the moment when we actually planned a fair bit of it. Try not to over think things. Broken hearts mend even when you think they won’t. It’s a book of clichés, these teenage years, but if you can survive them then you’re ten times better for it.
It’s worth noting that we try to date a few others this year. None of them seem to pan out and we keep going back to L or LG. I’d like to think that we were confused about what we wanted, but I think they both filled very different holes that we needed filled: safety and love. That’s not to say that we didn’t get that from our family, but we don’t really see it that way at the time. The focus is on the younger three and we really just want to be our own soul. Hard to figure out what that means when you are unsure of the real world.
As a side note – when everyone forgets your birthday, including L, and your birthday cake falls onto the floor and your shoes… try to be optimistic. We still don’t care for birthdays much, they always seem to carry a negative, but at least Meesh remembered and at least she tried to make it shine a bit.
One last piece of advice: keep writing in your journals. We will never see Ms. R or Mrs. G again, but their ideas of writing our thoughts down and keeping to the positive will go a long way. It’s helpful even if we think it’s redundant and monotonous. I still have all of those journals in my office and read them from time to time. we have an odd way of looking at things and its helpful to see how much we’ve changed thanks to what we’ve been through. It’s not all exciting, but its our history just the same.
– A
A. N. Stetzl 