Allow me to let you in on a few really important things about your life. As you grow older, you’ll realize how funny life can be.

Those people calling you names right now? In a few years time, they’ll beg to become part of your life. Leave them where you found them for they have shown you who they are.

That crowd you so desperately want to fit in with? Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they don’t see you. They never have. The reason they don’t see you is because you don’t see yourself.

You have this habit right now of seeing yourself through everyone else’s eyes. This is a mistake. But don’t worry—there will come a day when you’ll be taught an excessively painful, hurts-like-hell lesson that you do not want to learn. You’ll feel stupid and humiliated and you’ll cry yourself to sleep. But don’t worry, because if you let it, that lesson will guide you. It will help you. It will change your life.

You will wonder how you always seem to be too much for some people and not enough for others. But one day you’ll realize that you are just the right amount of everything…for you.

Sometimes you’ll feel really passionate about certain issues and the people around you won’t give a damn. When this happens remember that it’s not their fight, it’s yours. In that moment, you’ll find the courage to stand alone.

When people speak, they are offering their opinion. Their opinion is not a fact.

And you know that path other people have so carefully laid out for you? Resist it. Resist it will all your might. Go create your own.

Stop looking for people or things to help you pass the time. Time is not something you pass, it’s something you spend. Spend it wisely. All those magnificent moments you share with the people you love? They can never, ever be repeated. Once the moment is gone, it’s gone forever. So put down your phone and drink this moment in.

I’m sorry to say this, but a time will come when your heart will get broken and you won’t know what to do. You’ll feel like you’ve been splintered into a million awful pieces and in many ways, you will be. At times you’ll feel so shattered that you’ll wonder how you’ll ever recover.

But you will recover, though not as quickly or as heroically as you’d like.

It will feel like you are falling off the face of the earth.  And when you do, some of the people who promised they’d always be there for you will not  be there. Some people who never owed you a single moment of their time, will be standing right beside you.

And as that vicious tornado is ripping your emotional life to pieces, you’ll manage to do something that takes you by surprise:

You will keep your heart open, even with all of its most broken pieces. This might be your greatest achievement ever.

Remember that time you were walking down the road on your own and got a bad feeling inside? That was your gut speaking. You didn’t listen to it then, but in the future, you will always listen to it. It knows. It really knows.

Remember when that woman on TV said that you could never love anyone until you loved yourself? You considered her selfish and inconsiderate, but that woman was right. As you grow older, you’ll figure out exactly what she meant—that really loving yourself has nothing to do with looking into the mirror and has everything to do with looking into your heart.

Do you remember that Christmas when everyone was gathered round? You wanted to eat the chocolate but you didn’t. You thought you were fat. But the chocolate was beautiful, exquisite, scrumptious. In the future, eat the chocolate. And enjoy every, gorgeous bite.

Oh, and one last thing:

That lemon you’re so desperately rubbing onto your face? It will never get rid of your freckles. You can’t see it now, but those freckles are an innate and wonderful part of you.

So relax and put the lemon down. You will grow into your freckles. Believe me, you really will.

With love,

Big Lisa

Author: L.E. Buggy

Apprentice Editor: Julie Barr / Editor: Nicole Cameron

Image: Brooke Cagle/Unsplash