A Letter to my Younger Self

Dear Younger Self,

You are.

I wanted to write, "You are beautiful," but that doesn't do you justice. You simply are. And no one else is -- not in the way you are.

Your presence fills the room in a way that no one else's does. Your shoulders sit at their own angle. You blink at your own rate.

You are uniquely -- in the unadulterated sense of the word -- uniquely you.

Others will try to mold you into them -- or, worse, into someone whose multidimensionality has been stripped, leaving them a two-dimensional object on a magazine page or a TV screen. You are so much more than a photo. You are more than a poised smile on a Facebook wall.

You are.

Others will tell you that you are selfish, that you are self-obsessed, that you love yourself too much. Don't believe them for a second. You deserve to be enthralled with your you-ness, the way a toddler is mesmerized by a leaf. You are full of wonder and wondrous.

You are.

Someday, someone will fall in love with who you are. He will be intoxicated by you. And then, without warning, he will do the unthinkable, the devastating: he will challenge you.

He will demand that you act differently, dress differently, feel differently. And you'll consider listening, because at one time, he loved you. You'll think he knows you better than you know yourself. You'll feel like less than you are. You will realize that long before, you gave someone else the power to determine your own self-worth. And you'll consider changing.

Don't.

You are perfect.

You are.