My good friend Jamie from Chosen Chaos (whom I have yet to meet in real life but am HOPING to someday) had a series called “If I Could Turn Back Time.” in which she asked various bloggers this question:

If you had the oppor­tu­nity to sit down with your 18 year old self, what would you say to her?

I wrote a letter to my 18-year-old self for Jamie’s blog shortly before I made Gfunkified.com my new home. Now, Jamie is wrapping the series up and inviting everyone who wrote a post for it to share it on our own blogs and link them all up together. You can see the rest of them here.

Dear 18-Year-Old Greta,

Right now you’re excited about grad­u­at­ing high school and going to col­lege. But I know you’re scared. Of every­thing. Scared of new peo­ple, of being in that huge univer­sity with very few peo­ple that you know, of hav­ing kids one day, of not hav­ing any friends, of being sin­gle for the rest of your life.

Girl. STOP IT. Yes, the world is big, but you will be FINE. Peo­ple will like you, boys will like you (unless you act like a crazy stalker, so don’t do that), you will have a dif­fi­cult but mean­ing­ful adult life, and you will have four of the most beau­ti­ful, inter­est­ing, cre­ative, mad­den­ing kids imaginable.

Most things that hap­pen to you aren’t that big of a deal, so I don’t want to spoil them for you. But, I do want to warn you about a few things:

First (and most impor­tantly), you need to LIVE, really live, because right now, you’re in a bub­ble. A cou­ple of awful, tragic things are going to hap­pen to you and you don’t want to have any regrets. I know you’re shy, but things will only be bet­ter if you come out of your shell a lit­tle. Take a ton of pic­tures because when you’re depressed about these bad things that are hap­pen­ing, you won’t be fil­ing mem­o­ries away like you should. And you NEED to remem­ber the good stuff that hap­pens, too. It’s the only way you’ll thrive.

Speak­ing of being depressed….after the first very bad thing hap­pens, go ahead and get an anti­de­pres­sant from your doc­tor. She will ask you if you want it, and you will try to be strong. But you will need it, so you might as well get started on it right away.

BUT, before that, when your doc­tor gives you a pre­scrip­tion that is sup­posed to get rid of your zits? DO NOT TAKE IT. THROW IT AWAY. IT WILL HAVE THE OPPOSITE EFFECT AND YOU WILL WANT TO HIDE FOR AN ENTIRE SEMESTER. That col­lege ball­room dance class will be a lot more fun if your face isn’t cov­ered in erupt­ing vol­ca­noes and you’re too embar­rassed to dance so closely with mem­bers of the oppo­site sex.

Also, that boy that calls you and pro­fesses his love? It’s roman­tic, yes. But he’s bad news. File that away.

So, in con­clu­sion 18-Year-Old Self:

You’re cute, you’re smart, peo­ple will like you if you talk to them, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO TO A DERMATOLOGIST FIRST.

Good luck,

31-Year-Old Greta

P.S. Try not to do any­thing TOO stu­pid or embar­rass­ing because remem­ber those kids that you think you’re not going to have? They’re going to ask a LOT of questions.

P.P.S. Speak­ing of….you might as well start think­ing of some good answers to hard ques­tions now. Death, giv­ing birth, monthly cycles? Your 31-year-old self is not very good at think­ing on her toes about this stuff, so take some notes now and prac­tice. Trust me.