Dear younger me,

I know it sucks right now, and I know you are more than ready to get out of the "hell" you call high school. I am here to validate your feelings. You should be more than ready to leave, and you will be happy to be gone. I promise you, it gets better after high school. You just have to prepare yourself for the world you are entering called college.

High school was the worst three and a half years of your life, and you are lucky you were able to leave before the end of your fourth year. In high school, you really experienced what it felt like to be excluded, in all categories. You felt what it was like to not a team, with no real explanation to why. You felt what it was like to lose your best friends, and you knew what it was like to work full-time and be a full-time student. You knew what exhaustion felt like first hand.

It does get better.

It sounds extremely cliche, and it is, but it does. You still will feel lonely a lot in college, but you will know how to handle the loneliness better. You will not have as many friends as you expected, and that is normal, but the friends you do have are great, and they are worth your time. You will still be depressed in the winter, that doesn't go away just because you did, just don't expect everything gets better the moment you leave. It's a process, a process that takes time. By your second semester of freshman year, you will feel better. You will see that you do have control.

Get involved.

You aren't really involved, especially that last year and a half of high school, but you will be in college. You will be an exec board member to an organization, as well as, an active member of others. Staying busy keeps you from thinking about the bad. The more you do, the less time you have to binge watch a Netflix series (this is a good thing).

You will care more about your education in college but still put an effort in, in high school. It matters more than you'd think.

In all honesty, college is great, but it also will go by quickly. I am not going to say it is the best four years of your life because of stress, money, and you don't know the future, but from what I can tell right now, it is pretty rad.

Love,

College Me.