A Letter to My 6th Grade Self

12 or 13 year old Emme, uploaded to Facebook the summer after 6th grade

This week, my sophomores wrote letters to both their past (6th grade) and future (end of senior year) selves. A few students asked if they could attach pictures of their younger selves for reference, and I loved the idea. I even pulled up a picture of my middle school self to show them that we all (even a former pageant girl and their currently very cool and charming and funny English teacher) had an awkward middle school phase. They loved seeing a bit of me that they haven’t encountered before. We shared some laughs at my heavy eyeliner, cartoon t-shirt, straight side-swept bangs with wavy hair otherwise, and the red digital camera reflected in the mirror in which I took the photo. I entirely lack shame and embarrassment when it comes to being goofy in the classroom (which I’d love to make another post on later), so I found it to be a unique bonding experience for us to be able to laugh about (what would be for most) embarrassing photos of ourselves from middle school.

But it got me thinking: what would I tell that girl in the purple shirt and shy smile from that photo? My heart is pulled in two separate directions of swelling love and pitted sadness for that sweet girl; if only she knew what I know now. She has such a beautiful heart, and all of the pain she is encountering in that time will eventually make sense.

Sweet little Emme,

Twenty-six-year-old Emme here. I’m more than twice your age now, and when I tell you things have unfolded in the most prayer-answering yet unexpected way, I’m speaking in the simplest yet truest terms possible.

Some things pan out according to plan. We allow our inner selves to shine through on our 18th birthday when we finally get to color our hair blonde, and we never look back, feeling like we look on the outside what we feel like on the inside. We also still love everything Disney; we never lose our childlike sense of wonder. We're still friends with Rose (obviously), Taylor, Rachel, Ashley, Caity, and most of the other girls you spend time with. Along with them, we find lifelong friends throughout the different parts of life, including the sorority we joined in college as well as the pageants we dive head-first into our freshman year. We also still love fashion and books, are fascinated by politics, and love Jesus and our Catholic faith. We love our faith so much, in fact, that we travel to Mexico our freshman year of college to serve with the Missionaries of Charity there. It's been so fulfilling to see our childhood dreams come to fruition.

We won’t, however, follow through on many of the details of our original 40-year plan we’ve had since we were eight. We don’t go to an Ivy-league school, we don’t become an attorney, we’re not a politician, and we aren’t married (and certainly not to our childhood best friend that you thought we would be) with a couple of kids yet. Being such a planner, we’ve had to grieve the loss of who we assumed we’d be by now, but that isn’t to say that who we’ve become is negative in any way. In fact, she’s more intricately composed by the Creator than you ever could have imagined, for both the good and the sad.

We still have your intense empathy and strong moral compass. We’re intensely intellectually curious as we have always been, too. I know you think we’ll use this to become an attorney (a real-life Elle Woods, of course) and/or a politician, but we end up letting that goal go in April of our last year of college (we graduate a year early). Instead, we pursue a dream that’s always been on our heart, but we thought we could never attain: teaching. Our high school teachers will teach us so much and be for us who we needed at that time, and you’ll become inspired to do the same.

Emme in March of 2023, aged 26, engaged to be married in July and loving her career as a teacher.

We know this was the right decision and find soul-soothing peace in it (despite the challenging career field it is) because we are fulfilling our desire to seek out knowledge, kindness, and understanding, and we’re putting it back into our community for (what is now five years into our career) hundreds of kids who remind us so much of ourself at that age. When Mom insists that you take Latin your freshman year, say yes. Trust me, you’ll thank her for it later. It eventually, in an indirect way, becomes the ticket we need to be an advocate for those who are marginalized, vulnerable, or outcast in society. We love those the most, and will continue to fight for them, whether in our career or out in the world (via the internet, which is a wild thing in and of itself, but we don’t have time to dig into that).

We’ve always had a lot of love in our heart to give, but felt like there was nowhere to give it all. Whether it’s friends, a romantic relationship, or family, we have struggled to find someone who reciprocates that equally. We’ve also struggled to give that same love we would so readily give to others to ourself. The bad news is it will continue to feel this way, just in different contexts (specifically with our students; we definitely care more about our content and their education and well-being than they do, but they don’t see the full picture yet, so it’s not necessarily fair to hold it against them). The good news, though, is that it doesn’t last forever. Eventually, although way later than we had anticipated, a man will come into our life in the most unexpected time and way. He has patience with us because he has respect for us, and he’ll wait for us until we're ready. That patience and respect doesn’t stop after he sees the real us as we are at our core, and it doesn’t stop once he’s been around a while because he’s bored. He loves us, all of the things we have been convinced will make us unlovable included, simply because we’re us. We’ve finally found our match who is able to reciprocate the gargantuan amount of love we have for others (and rivals our random knowledge). I look forward to the day when you, with joy-filled tears in your eyes, finally feel your soul breathe a sigh of relief because we found a person who is the place where our heart feels at home. With him, the relationship progresses so organically and continues to run naturally and smoothly, which is the greatest gift we never believed could happen for us. We also rescue a dog who is the other predominant recipient of our affection; he’ll play a large role, in addition to our therapist (which we FINALLY get after YEARS of knowing we had a need), in ensuring we make it this far. He’s pure and wholesome canine chaos all rolled into a speckle-covered, 80 pound lap dog, and our future husband will love and care for him just as we do. It’ll make your heart swell with gratitude to see the life we’ve created for ourself and how far we’ve come from the lonely, heartbroken thirteen-year-old we were where you are now.

We learn so much about ourself in our 20s. We experience the real world on our own for the first time, and we really enjoy our independence. We also learn that we have a tendency to take that independence too far, which results in us isolating ourself, which is eventually detrimental to our mental health. Luckily, we have a support system in our life now that keeps us afloat (along with our daily dose of Prozac). Your relationship with Ruby goes from not understanding each other AT ALL to being the best of friends, with the only other people who get you like she does (or even more) being Rose and your future husband, Jake. All along, we and Ruby have been more similar than we realize, and we've found that we bond over those shared experiences. We can trust her to be excited about any random fact we could possibly throw at her, patient when you go off on your soapbox, and present a safe place for secrets. While we end up living about two and a half hours away from Rose and her little ones (and almost five and a half hours away from Ruby and hers), we still remain close (and still hug each other without arms and give each other a smooch on the forehead before we leave). Our sisters are truly the biggest blessing.

We learn why we’ve felt like an actor our whole life. We no longer want to be a secretary or work an office job in a cubicle clacking away at a keyboard all day and answering the ringing phone that hurts our ears and makes us tense up because we just want to be normal. It all finally makes sense. We take an interpersonal communications class our junior year of high school that finally makes communicating with others make some sense because the rules of how to talk to other people are explained and a "why" is given (though we still don't understand why someone one day just decided this is how it should be). We find it odd that other kids say the class is “easy” because they “already know how to talk to other people.” It takes until our mid-twenties, but we start to learn to quit acting around other people how we think “normal” people act just so we don’t make them uncomfortable. In fact, we’re actually trying not replicate what we carefully observed “normal” people doing. It’s always felt unnatural. While it’s a process we’re still learning, we are slowly allowing ourself to be who we are at our core all the time, not just when we’re alone or with Rose, like you do now.

We go through years of therapy to find that the reason why we’ve felt like an alien on Earth that didn’t get the same how-to guide that apparently everyone else has; why we’ve always been friends with and empathized with the “weird” kids, and why we’ve always been outspoken in defending them; why we got along better with teachers than the other kids at school and got voted “teacher’s pet” in the yearbook; why we always wanted to answer questions in class, even if we were the only one; why we were called “overly sensitive” as a child; why we have struggled with composing an original storyline despite our love for writing and ability to escape into the rich and complex world of our own mind; why we read the dictionary for fun in 3rd grade in hopes of learning the exact word to communicate to others what we mean because we felt so misunderstood; why we followed all rules to the letter for fear of disappointing an authority figure, God included, and carried debilitating guilt when we didn't follow the "rules" because we didn't believe they were right; why we’ve always counted the number of steps we take per square on the sidewalk or else we won’t think of anything else for the rest of the day except for how we were “wrong,” so we go back and redo the right steps, even if it takes longer to get to where we’re going; why we've always been confused and curious with our own reflection and even practiced making "normal" facial expressions in the mirror; why we sing the same songs and watch the same movies over and over again; why we have intense interest in things other people can’t find it in themselves to care about, and why we don’t care about things “normal” people seem to like; why your faith has and will continue to be a struggle; why you’re always procrastinating; why we’ve always had a love/hate relationship with structure and routine; and why we've always been called a “perfectionist” is all due to the perfect storm of diagnoses that will take several years to correctly determine: depression, OCD, ADHD, and autism. Sweet girl, we know we’ve always been different and always will be, but we know why now, and there’s so much peace in that explanation.

While we don’t get married until we’re 26 and we don’t become an attorney, what we do find is the happiness and peace we’ve always wanted, but not where we thought we’d find it. It’s so much better than the multiple long-term plans (5, 10, 20, 30, 40 year outlines) we set for ourself. I wish I could be sitting there in the audience of the games, concerts, plays, and ice shows, rooting for you, hugging you, and verbalizing my pride for the incredible young lady you are and will become, and I hope you’d be proud of who we are now, too. We’ve been through some real shit (and we still swear just as much as we did at 15; that’ll never change), but give it time (like another 12 years) because, spoiler alert, we make it out on the other side as our best version of who we hope to be. We become the woman we’ve always looked up to. We did it all for us and our Lord. You want to know what the best part is, though? As cliche as it is (and we’ve always loved cliches), the best is yet to come, sweet girl. The best is yet to come.

All of my love,

Future Emme