A Letter to 15 Year Old Me: 15 Years Later

Hi Kelsey, 

I realize that these types of exercises are usually for the purposes of attracting other readers for the sake of "relatability." You and I both know that we are only "relatable" to a minority of people. I know that you have always felt like an outsider, you were never given any clear answers as to why that is. You just know that whatever you were getting bullied for is a bullshit reason. Your classmates will make up EVERY excuse in the book as to why that was; they will claim ignorance, the stupidity of youth, whatever the excuse of the week happens to be.

No, we will not get the apology from all of our classmates that we had been hoping for. There will be no tears of guilt over the pain and suffering that they have caused us for our entire childhood. Those people will carry on either having happy families or else getting extensive criminal records for various offenses. You and me, on the other hand, suffer from the PTSD of it while also struggling to prove our humanity to random strangers whose ideas about disability are stuck in the 1990's.

There will be people, including your own family, who still doubt that you will make it.  

Sure, it would be satisfying if the children of those people came upon posts like this and confronted their parents about their past, but we both know that won't happen. Their past won't even be so much as a blip in their monitor except to look back fondly, nostalgically. We will not even have the privilege to look back at all so fondly. After many attempts of trying to make friends in a new city, there will be people who will gaslight, manipulate, and abuse you because they have never lived a life with family dysfunction, abuse, or even friction. 

Nobody will come and save us, we will have to be our own hero. At least that will be our thought process during this time. We will be alone for quite a while, we will still have so much pain that we have to process. You will learn that it is okay to ask for help even if the help is not "helpful." Learning to advocate for yourself will be the biggest hurdle that you have ever faced.

After a long time of loneliness, anxiety, and stress we have found our "community." We have found people who understand us, help us push through our pain. We have even found someone who loves us for who we are, knows about our past but still accepts us anyway. I know that it sounds really hard to believe. After being told for years that we are just monsters that should be put away, that we are violent, not worthy of love. Your partner will be nothing but caring for you and considerate of your every want and need. He will know exactly how it feels to be left in the sidelines.

There are so many things about ourselves that we have yet to discover; those uncomfortable feelings about yourself as a woman. They are valid, it will be scary because it will be "new" to you. Please trust the process that you will be going through for the next fifteen years and quite possibly 15 more years. It will be hell majority of the time, there is going to be a massive pandemic that will change the world that you have known and make things worse….

But, at the risk of sounding cliché, it does get better. 

Sincerely with love, 

Kelsey, at 30 Years Old.