'A Letter To Myself'- A Lot Can Happen in a Year.

In 2015, a good friend of mine handed me a piece of paper because she thought it would be something I’d be interested in. It was ‘a letter to future me’. I’m incredibly sentimental, I treasure memories and materialistic things that hold memories. I love the feeling of looking back at old photos and having memories flood back, and seeing how things have changed over the years.

So, of course, I wrote a letter to my future self and vowed to open it on New Years Eve. Things didn’t go to plan and I only opened my letter when I stumbled across it when looking through paperwork a week after January had already started!

2016 was a huge year for me, it was the year that I embarked on the biggest and most exciting journey of my life. As you’ll know if you’ve read my blog before, last year I moved to America for over half a year as part of a study abroad programme with my university. I lived, studied and worked abroad for nearly seven months and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I made life long friends, created memories I’ll treasure forever and got to do some amazing things for work (I even ended up in the same room as Donald Trump to photograph the rally in Atlanta). Of course, before I moved I was so nervous, I saw the letter to future me as a way to set goals for myself, then a year later I would look back and see how much I’ve achieved and how much I’ve changed.

I’m not going to go into detail about exactly what is in the letter (it’s very personal and to be honest, I think anyone else who read it would get really bored). I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this on my blog before and I rarely talk about it in person, but I suffer from anxiety. I know that many people throw that word around today and it’s seen as a ‘me too’ issue, but anxiety is something that many people battle with on a daily basis. Some days, I’m fine, I feel on top of the world and I can push the anxiety to one side, but then there are days where it’s incredibly hard to not panic and worry about anything and everything. My anxiety causes me to have low self-confidence at times, which I suppose you could say is relatively normal for a 21-year-old girl. But low confidence can really damage the way someone sees themselves, it makes it hard to accept traits about yourself you don’t like and makes it virtually impossible to not worry about how people see you and what they think of you.

Long story short, in my letter I said that I wanted to work on my confidence while I was in America, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to take the time to find out more about myself, and change things I didn’t like or wanted to improve on. I also wrote that I wanted to change the way how I sometimes put up with more than I should. I wouldn’t say that I’m a pushover, I’m not patient enough for that! But I do go out of my way a lot, sometimes for people I know may not deserve it. I basically wanted to take less shit and focus more on myself!

A year later, I think I see some change. I’ve asked some of the people who know me the best and they’ve agreed. I think once you’ve addressed things about yourself you’re facing the truth, if there’s anyone in this world who you can’t lie to, it’s yourself! Over the past year I’ve learnt that hand on heart, the only people’s opinions of me I should care about are mine, my families, and my close friends. The saying “those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter” comes to mind, and as cheesy as it sounds, it’s true! Why do I spend so much time caring about what people think of me if at the end of the day, they couldn’t care less about me? I think this comes with age, over the years I’ve learned to accept things about myself that I hated when I was a teenager. Whether it be things about my appearance, things about my personality, there are things I’ve just accepted.

So, all in all, writing a letter to myself was something I loved. I’d pretty much forgotten everything I wrote so to see it again a year later was both funny ,honestly, a little emotional (yes, I shed tears!). I remember writing the letter and I feel like I’ve grown so much since then.  I’m more confident, I feel less pressure to be liked by everyone, and I’ve discovered that I’m stronger than I thought.  This is an on going process, I think you deal with things like this all throughout your life. Change and growth is inevitable, you just have to learn to deal with it and accept it.

At this moment in time, I’m not at my best. Being in my final year of university as well as other things going on in my life are causing me a fair bit of stressed, so I took it upon myself  to write another letter, this time I’ll open it in a month rather than a year. I know that doesn’t sound like a long time, but anything can happen in four weeks.

I know this post was a long one (I’d be shocked if anyone has actually made it to this point!) but I guess it was a good way to get some thoughts out there and vent a little.

As always, thank you for reading!

Until next time,

Becca x