Sitting down at my computer, at the ripe old age of nineteen, I’ve learned a lot in the few minutes I’ve been alive on this earth. Yes, I understand that there is still so much left for me to learn and for me to understand and I have plenty more growing and changing to do. I understand that someday when I look back on the decisions I’m making now, that some of them I’m likely to regret or to kick myself for. I’m making my peace with that. Those nights that I stay up way too late and I do things I’d rather not tell my parents about and those nights that I stay in because I’m tired and I really just miss my dog are all precursors to the rest of my life. I’m not going to apologize for doing exactly what I want to do when I want to do it, because right now I’m allowed to. I haven’t yet built a career that’s going to shape the way that I live my life and I’m not tied to a husband or a child yet. So many of my friends are too busy trying to get to the next stage of their lives and trying to be thirty years old already that they can’t take the time to appreciate all of the wonder and excitement that being a young adult has to offer. We’re allowed to have this time to feel too much and to fight too hard for things that won’t matter to us in ten years. That’s what your late teens and early twenties are for.

When I’m upset about a boy and I’m told “oh, honey, there are going to be so many more boys in your life and you’re going to meet so many more interesting people,” I understand that the advice given to me is supposed to be reassuring. Don’t diminish the way that my young heart is feeling, though. Don’t look down on me for being soft. I understand that I likely have sixty or more years left of this life and that if love doesn’t happen for me yet it’s not a big deal, but the grown-ups in my life also have to look inside of themselves and remember what this feels like. It’s not a bad thing to be heartbroken and it’s not a bad thing to be down about trivial relationships that probably wouldn’t have lasted past the first year, because everybody lives through this. There’s something magic about the kind of scorn that can leave a young person bedridden and poetically hateful, so let me be sour and soak the bad feelings for all that they’re worth. Let me learn from this.

When I’ve put myself in positions to earn concussions from something I knew I probably shouldn’t have been doing in the first place- don’t chastise me for it for the next seven holidays. The conversation I had with the doctors and my instructors directly following the incident were punishment enough. It was a mistake, and I learned from it, and it’s going to make a really great story someday. Celebrate the fact that a minor concussion was all that happened and allow me to go get into some other, different, (hopefully) safer trouble that you can make fun of me for as time passes.

When I’m talking too much about experiences that hurt me, be it the loss of a friend or a rejection or a position I put myself in. You don’t have to fix things for me, you don’t even have to respond. A lot of the speaking that I’m doing is just me trying to work through things on my own. It just makes me feel a lot more put together to think that I’m talking to someone rather than at the universe. Much of what I’m going through now I am experiencing for the first time. Know that the way that I feel and the way that you felt when going through these things are different, because we are different people. I appreciate that you care, but not every silence is an awkward one, and just because there’s a space in the conversation doesn’t mean that you need to fill it.

That being said, advise me. When I seek guidance, don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, but tell me what you might have done in a similar situation, or what you did do and what you would have done differently. To the adults in my life who’ve been adults for a while, thank you for hearing the stories about me that I’d rather you not have heard and for loving me anyway. Thank you for (most of the time) understanding how young I am and though that’s not a definite excuse for all of the shenanigans I’ve gotten into the past few years, thank you for allowing it to give me some leash when it comes to troublemaking- as long as I’m safe (for the most part).

I’m not going to apologize for acting my age, because I only get to be nineteen for one year. I’m only going to be in college for two or three more (fingers crossed), and then for the most part, I’ll have to grow up. The life that I’m living right now won’t fit in to the plan I have for after college, and again- I’m coming to terms with it. I’m doing my best to be the best version of my late-teenage-self right now, and I haven’t screwed up too colossally, so until I do, I’ll be unapologetically young and careless, and ask that you love me anyway.