Well I haven’t done a writing prompt for quite a long time now. I guess, it’s about time I revisited them. And look what I found (actually chose out of many):
If you could go back in time and meet your 16-year-old self, what three things would you tell yourself?
Gosh! 16 year old me! That silent, shy, extremely introvert girl with zero self confidence or self esteem. I think the first thing I would tell her is that she is pretty. No matter how much people point to her dark skin tone or to her non-existent fatness, and remind her how ugly she is. She is pretty. Those people have a very screwed up idea of beauty.
Second thing on the list would be a bit tough to explain. How can I explain my 16-year-old self that she is not responsible for the action of all the perverts roaming on the Indian road? It’s not her fault. It’s the failure of our society that not only fails to protect our girls and women from such scum, but it instead dares to blame them for its failure.
This concept would demand her to unlearn everything she knows in matter of minutes or hours (depends how much time I am given to explain it to her). I don’t think it can be done in a short time period. After all, how wise can you expect a 16-year old to be? Nevertheless, it remains in the list. It’s worth a try.
Last thing that I want to tell my 16-year-old self is that no matter how bad things become, no matter how much she feels that she can’t make out of it, SHE WILL. And it’s worth it. This one is for the darkest hours of her life yet to come.
I know I can expand a lot on all of them and the last point is a bit anti-climatic, but these are my honest replies to the question and in that order. And honesty wins over the aesthetic sense any day. At least in my book.
So is there anything you would like to tell your 16-year-old self? If you would like to do a post about it, consider yourself tagged (it’s an interesting topic), otherwise put it in the comment here. :)
This is very interesting...I do sometimes wish I could go back to my 12 year old self (which was about the time my self-esteem hit rock bottom) and talk to myself about the stuff I now know. Things might have been so different. But then again, we are who we are today because of those dark times we went through, don't you reckon?
ReplyDeleteAgreed, and simply because of that I wouldn't want to tell myself about the darkest time of life or how to avoid it. I guess I needed to get through all that to reach where I am. But still I would have wanted to tell myself at least the first two points. I don't think I would have been able to convince myself on either point, let alone change it, yet it would have been nice to hear them at that age.
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