Letter to My Thirteen Year Old Self

Dear Claire,

Hi. I know there’s a lot going through your head right now and that there’s lots of people telling you a lot of different things, but just sit down and listen to me for a moment. You’re okay. Stop shaking. Breathe. Inhale, exhale. Three times. Deeply. It's going to be okay.
I know your heart is eager for an explanation about what is going on. I’m here to tell you that you’re experiencing growing pains. Severe ones, but don’t worry. You’ll grow out of them just like your favorite navy polka dotted mini skirt.
The pain your feeling is the realization that the world is scary. You have found that some people are mean and that life can be cruel. You are afraid. This paralyzing fright inside you needs to be let out, and the hospital gown you currently wear reflects this. Let me assure you, though, through this letter, that this fright does not mean the world is any less spectacularly beautiful, nor life is any less worth living.
First, some advice: for the next couple of months, write everything down. The colors of the walls,  the hands of the nurses, the magazine cutouts above your bed, the way the morning sun shines on the dining tables, the size and shape of your pills. You’re going to look back on this, while re-reading the first ten pages of your journal as if it is an ancient artifact. You will read the entries as a story of a stranger. Someone you are so foreign to that all the details leave you holding your breath. 
The whole thing, which right now seems like the experience that will shape the entirety of your life, will just become one big blur. This might be scary to think about right now, but trust me, years later it’s not scary at all. It’s relieving, truthfully. I promise you that the girl who currently sleeps in the third bed of room two in unit one will become a completely foreign individual.  
Still though, sometimes I imagine you. The frightened little girl whose face frantically asks the mirror “who are you?” in the terribly artificial fluorescent lighted, square bathroom. Although you are a stranger, parts of you I cannot forget. I wish I could hug you.
On a happier note, in the next few years, (yes, years) you’re going to do so many things. I don’t want to spoil anything, but trust me, a lot of wonderful, thrilling things. You’ll go places and meet people that you wouldn’t trade for the world. You’ll accomplish things you always hoped to one day accomplish and you’ll do things you swore you’d never do. Both will result in equally beautiful and wonderful memories. There is so much to look forward to.
You will look to the sky and you will smile at all the color you are fortunate enough to see, all the rain you are fortunate enough to taste on your tongue and all the wind you are fortunate enough to feel in your hair. You will smile at the world.
Right now you can think of yourself in multiple different ways: a snake, a butterfly or a flower. A snake shedding its previous skin, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, or the bulb of a flower. Either way, it is just the beginning. You are a seed right now, just like you were in Mom’s belly thirteen years ago. Your growing pains will eventually cease, but you will never stop growing. There is no reason to be afraid of living. 
You will not just survive this, you will thrive. 

Yours truly, 
Claire 

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