Dear Simone,
Your 6th-grade year seems like a very scary time. You are preparing to test into a selective enrollment high school and that can be very scary. Not just the idea of testing to get somewhere but actually preparing to move to a place that you have never been with older people you’ve never met. But you still have months to prepare for everything that is going to happen at that school. You have to remember that you are still at this school so learn to just be where you are with the people you are near until you can leave the school and the people behind. You will have to learn to coexist with hurtful and not helpful people for the rest of your life. You are smart and you will get where you want to go but some people will hate you for how easy they think it will be for you to get there.
You need to learn to live with the people in your life that you will consider your friends that will hurt you and you have to realize that just because you are there for someone they will not always be there for you. The thing that will hurt the most in the separation of you and the people that you will “leave behind ” is the feeling of abandonment and loss for the people you used to love and that used to love you. The friends you have had for most of your life will be so ready to leave for a reason unknown to you. You are building yourself so when some people can’t handle the idea that they might not be the best and that can cause them to be very spiteful of you. Not everyone has the capacity to be happy for the people around them. You need to see that with all the hatred and twisted love that is around you shouldn’t impact you and you can’t contribute to it. You might tire out because you have to deal with people every day but you should not let them completely drain you. You shouldn’t let yourself hyper-fixate on other people’s emotions.
Since you are a very emotion-led person (and that is not a bad thing unless you let them rule you) you tend to observe and absorb other people’s feelings. You have to listen to how you are feeling and try to understand those emotions but they shouldn’t be the only thing that decides how you react to something. People will hurt you and that is unavoidable but when you feel hurt you should not hurt people back. But as they pull away from you and you are hurting you have to realize that maybe it was for the best. Revenge is not a good place to be because putting out bad energy takes way more of your energy than letting something go and forgiving it, even if that person didn’t apologize. You will be able to control and understand your emotions way easier once you stop feeling emotions for other people and once you stop surrounding yourself with people who make you feel bad for no reason. The collection of emotions, specifically negative ones will lead you down a dark hole of hurt. So you need to learn how to express yourself and listen but not absorb others’ emotions.
You will be a much more relaxed person once you get away from people that sneakily make you hate yourself or make you anxious. You shouldn’t be thinking about how you might accidentally annoy someone or make them upset if you are around your “friends”. The people that you constantly surround yourself with should always be a constant source of comfort and free of worries. You don’t have to change yourself to keep people in your life. If a person is showing you that they don’t care for you and don’t want you around then don’t be around them. That school is very small and stressing over friendship for the short time that you have left is not worth it. You have to learn to comfortably be by yourself and respectfully be near people you don’t like.
Love,
Your 10th grade self
Simone Bishop – Lindblom – Class of 2025