My Sixteen-Year-Old Self: A Reflection and Contest Entry - Part 1

Thanks to the Diet Coke drinking habits of my husband, and Coke’s rewards program, I receive several magazine subscriptions free. One of the magazines I receive and read regularly is Martha Stewart’s Whole Living Publication. Each month the magazine asks its readers to submit answers to a question about health, life, and relationships. If your answer proves creative or endearing enough, it is published in the next month’s issue and you, the writer, win a variety of products. Each month, I take note of the winning answers, and contemplate how I would answer the next month’s question. However, I have never taken the initiative to enter an answer. Whether due to my lack of interest in the question, my lack of time, or the other more pressing issues topping my “to do” list, I do not know. This month, however, I had fifteen minutes and a passion for the question. Therefore, I decided to take the initiative and send Whole Living an email to their question, “If you could go back and tell your 16 year old self one thing, what would you tell her?” The following is that email:

I grew up in, what used to be, a small California town. As with most small towns, running to the store or enjoying a sundae at the local ice cream parlor was a social event, since we would inevitably run into one, if not two or three, people we knew. Misbehaving was out of the question, since getting caught was unavoidable. Though some people would find this sense of community stifling, I loved it. I continually felt loved and protected. Today many of my friends still live within a 30-mile radius of my hometown. I, however, have lived in four different states, in four different regions of the United States. It often pains me to watch my best friends raising their children together, having girl's weekends together, and continuing to bask in the joys of a small tight-knit community. I often have to remind the sixteen year old inside me, that the places I have lived, the experiences I have had, and the people I have befriended, though not what I had dreamed, have shaped me, my life, and my outlook, in a positive way, as opposed to a negative way. That though I do not have the life I once dreamed of, I have something more real and dynamic.