My Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Laura

This is your 62 year old self writing to you from the year 2021 with a few pieces of advice.

For you, it's 1977, and at the moment, you're nineteen years old, which means your real life won't properly start for you until you're twenty-eight. Nine more years. It'll be a very long nine years because you haven't learned yet to listen to yourself; so far, you've only listened to what other people had told you and consequently, you're about to get married too early, before you've had any real experience. So far, you've had three sexual experiences and not one of them has been satisfactory, has it?

Mary Collins was sweet, but she was embarrassed and awkward. You tried to get her to do too much too soon. That ridiculous fumble with that lad at the party was exactly that - ridiculous and fumbled. And as for the man you're about to get married to - does he set you on fire? Is sex with him intense, passionate, erotic? Do you come alive as a woman when he fucks you? No, you don't, do you? Oh, you don't think of sex as 'fucking' yet, do you? You rather quaintly refer to it as 'making love'. Don't worry, you'll change, once you realise how incredible and amazing and beautiful real fucking can be.

Let me reassure you. That feeling you have, that you're somehow in the wrong life, as though you've inadvertently wandered into a film and you don't know any of the people in that film, and you don't know where you are (where the film is set), and you definitely don't know what's expected of you... THAT feeling, it'll last until July 1986. Then you'll have an experience, a wonderful, magical, beautiful experience that will change you as a person, as a woman, as... everything. Then you'll feel you truly belong. Then you'll most definitely find your world and you'll embrace it and kiss it and hunger for it daily... and you'll live it fully for the rest of your life.

The problem you have right now (because you're so young) is that you keep waiting for other people to tell you what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to be living, what you're meant to be doing, and what's expected of you. Wrong! You're the one who decides those things. No one else. You're not alive so that your life and its course can be determined by someone else. You're autonomous. You're in charge of your life and your life alone.

You're nineteen, you're young, slender, attractive, and sensual. Your sexual appetite, when it finally awakens, is immense. A huge number of men are going to find you immensely fuckable. Hundreds, and I mean hundreds of men will beg you for sex. Believe me, I'm not exaggerating. So when that moment happens and you get to make a decision, standing by a sea wall in what you consider to be a skimpy bikini, you'll make the right decision and it'll be the best decision you'll ever make. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but you'll know it when it happens. There'll be a moment when you make a choice and you'll make the right choice and it'll change your life in ways that will be (and still are) immeasurable. I congratulate myself daily for the way I've led my life. I congratulate you (and me) for making that choice, just as I congratulate you for making most of the choices you're going to make, thereby making me the woman I am now.

Some advice: don't try to rush the sequence by being greedy. That sounds cryptic because it is. I don't want to give anything away. Start with two, then go to three, then four, then five. Don't skip to big numbers before you've experience the lower numbers. You need to know each one properly. They each feel different, they each mean something different, and they'll each affect you differently, so don't skip any and don't try to rush either. You've got over thirty years. There'll be other stuff you find you like too. Embrace it, even if the general consensus is that it's 'wrong' in some way. It's not wrong. Nothing you do, or want to do is wrong. It's just small minds trying to shut you down, to make you conform. Your body will tell you what's right for you. Listen to it - let it tell you, and then do as it's telling you. Give your body what it needs and your body will look after your emotional well-being. Think of yourself as a queen bee. Everyone else is either a drone or a worker. Drones service the queen; workers are colleagues, friends, etc. Keep them separate. Mostly. And always keep your queen bee status. Never allow someone else to demote you. Never be demoted, and never demote yourself.

You've got some incredible experiences ahead of you and I feel very envious because, without the slightest hesitation, I'd do it all over again if I could. I'm 62 now and I'm starting to look like an old lady. When I look at those photos of you aged 19 and 20, I'm stupidly envious of your looks and your willowy body and your neat, sweet, tight little honeypot. I'm also incredibly jealous of all the wonderful experiences you're going to have. However, more than anything, I'm really proud of you and how you made me turn out. Thank you.

Lots of love to you

Laura.