_Myra_West_

, 22 min read

15 Things I Wish I Knew at 18-- What I Would Tell Myself at 18

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1. I've read through my journals when I was about 18 years old. I really hated myself, and when I was younger. I would just tell myself,

"Don't be so hard on yourself because you're not as bad as you think you are."

What I wrote when I was in high school was insane. I was just so full of self-hatred, and I really have overcome it. I'd say completely. I really don't hate myself at all, but when I was younger, I thought everything was wrong with me.

And I suppose that's kind of normal for high schoolers, but I feel like mine was a little more extreme. I just tell myself,

"At 18, there's nothing wrong with you."

And also, I would compare myself to everyone, and I still do that. I still do, but the thing that makes it easier is when you tell yourself that every single person on the planet, no matter how perfect they look or seem, they all experience the same pain and problems and insecurities.

2. And two, it would be to know how much your environment changes who you are.

And when I was younger and still living with my family, I was a really dark person, and I did not have any idea that my family was impacting me, like who I was, how I felt. And since moving out, I have become a completely different person, so much lighter and freer and happier.

The people around you will affect you and change who you are completely. They're gonna affect how you see things, how you see yourself. That's the most important one is they're the people around you are gonna affect how you see yourself, so keep that in mind. It's extremely helpful because I know now that everyone around me currently also impacts me, and I can choose who I allow to be around me. It really makes a huge difference.

And also, on the flip side, remember that you impact others and influence others, for positive or negative, so keep that in mind.

3. The third thing that I tell myself is life as an adult is much easier than I thought when I was younger. I actually believed that it would be completely impossible for me to be an adult, as in I went through this "Great Depression" at age 18. I mean "Great Depression" as in I just felt like I couldn't do anything. I couldn't figure out doctor bills, taxes, insurance. Couldn't figure out getting my own place, renting, living in the world, being alone. I felt completely inadequate, like I could not do anything.

4. And I would tell myself that that's completely BS and that being an adult is — well, I mean, just see, I don't mean the maturity aspect of being an adult, but just the different life aspects, you know, getting a job, moving out, paying bills, getting insurance, all of those things are relatively easy and simple and to the point.

And I would just tell myself that it's so much simpler than you think, and that's not as scary as you think. So don't ever fear moving out. Therefore, of things I tell myself when I was younger, 18, would be that things are gonna change a lot.

That it seems like when you're in childhood, you know, from 0 to 18, that things really don't change too much. Sure, your parents may get divorced, and different siblings are going to move out, but for the most part, life is pretty steady. Like, you usually stay in the same home, you've got your bedroom, everything's similar, probably with the same friends.

But yeah, it's so important to know that everything's going to change when you grow up. It seems for me that change has accelerated since I've moved out. That every couple of months, there's a drastic change. Every couple of months, I make a move, I get a new job, or I meet new people, or people leave me, or people move away, things like that.

Yeah, it's just, that things are always going to change. Remember that and be grateful for what you have now and know that it's not going to stay there. It's not going to last. It's everything will leave, everything will go, and family pets, everything will die. It's depressing, but at the same time, it allows you to be grateful for what you have.

5. Survive is an important one, really, really, really important. And that is, value yourself more.

When I was younger, when I was 18, when I was a teenager, I did not value myself at all. I did not think that I held any value. And I mean this probably in particular towards relationships and men. I didn't think that I had anything to offer. So when one guy comes around that I'm in love with, and he says he loves me, it was so easy to not value myself.

And that goes along with another thing that I've learned on the same line is to respect yourself, have self-respect, and make sure that you're being treated with the respect that you deserve. Because I believe that more, just a huge portion of young girls, teenage girls, I believe they are mostly girls, who don't have self-respect for themselves and make sure that they're treated with respect, and that they value themselves. I think that's really lacking. Girls need to know to value yourself and don't give yourself away. And by that, I don't mean sexually. I mean your heart. Don't give your heart away to any man who doesn't earn it or who doesn't deserve it. And make sure you're being treated right. It's extremely important. You can avoid a lot of pain.

6. Number six would be to take your health seriously. I know that when I was a child, a teenager, and 18 years old, even though I did eat rather healthy, that was mostly because of my parents. It wasn't because of my choice.

And actually, I had a lot of bitterness that I was forced to eat healthy for my childhood. But that's a different story. But basically, I didn't realize, I didn't really fully accept that food is tied to health. And I know that doesn't make too much sense because it's very obvious.

But when I was that age, I didn't really think that anything would affect me negatively. Like, when you're young, you kind of feel like you're never going to die, and that nothing can ever make you die, and nothing can ever make you sick. So I ate things without thinking about consequences.

So basically, I would tell myself at 18,

"Really be careful. Don't eat too much sugar. Don't eat too much fat. Don't eat any processed foods. Don't eat any junk food. None of it is worth it."

And that those things do cause disease and they cause your energy levels to crash. They do impact you.

Like, just get that in your head. But everything you eat, it's going to affect your body. And if you're eating bad things, it will hurt your body permanently and take years off of your life. And that's what I didn't accept that that what I ate would take years off my life.

I never even, it just, you know, you kind of feel invincible as a kid. And I always prided myself on feeling like I was very mature. And I think I was as an 18-year-old. But there was a lot I hadn't thought about yet. So yeah, take your health seriously as a kid!

And I keep telling my younger sister this before, you know, 'cause she's still young and she still has time. So the earlier the better. It's not like you can eat unhealthy when you're young and then clean up the act later. Just eat healthy now.

And also, research things. Research what foods are healthy for your brain. Research what's good for your gut. Research what's good for your energy levels. Everything like that. Research what fights cancer. All of those things. And then focus on getting those in your diet. And also exercise.

7. Number seven is to make a future plan.

And notice that I didn't say make a life plan, because I still don't believe that you have to make a life plan or that it's possible to make a life plan, because you can never predict how your life is going to go. But at 18 years old and as a teenager, I should have taken it very seriously to make a future plan, as in something like,

"Where will I be in the next two years? Where will I be in the next five years?"

Just little goals. Because when I was a teenager, I always thought to myself,

"I have no idea what I want to do. I have no idea how to do what I want to do."

And that I have time. And obviously, I didn't have any time, because now I'm here, and my life is not horrible, but I would have been in a different place if I had planned a thing.

8. I'd like to tell myself, and I was 18, would be that life gets better. I don't know how most people's lives are, but my childhood, so far, has been not the best part of my life. So, and I was told in high school on graduation day, I was told by the principal that your high school years are the best years of your life. And that's not true.

So any 18-year-old just graduating high school, don't worry about that. It's not the best years of your life. Some of the best years of your life are coming. So always know that when you're 18 and you're moving out, things can get a lot better.

9. The nice thing is something that people may roll their eyes over, and something that I never understood for years and years and years, the knife thing. I would tell myself as a teenager and as an 18-year-old is, dress modestly. And that has nothing to do with religious views. I have finally learned that it is so important to dress modestly. And by that, I don't mean don't dress conservatively.

You don't have to dress conservatively, but don't dress in a way where you're exposing all of your best parts. And the simple reason behind this thought is that not every man in the entire world deserves to see your body. And that just means that you, dressing modestly, is a way of telling yourself and the world that you value yourself and that you respect yourself and that you know that your body is a gift and that you know that not all the men in the world don't deserve to see it.

It's so simple to me, I'm open-minded. I don't judge women who dress exposing-ly, but I don't understand the way of thinking, because I'd like them to know how valuable they are and that men are looking at their body, and men do not deserve to see it. You know, I believe that they may have to earn the right to see the best parts of you.

So when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I dressed the way that all teenagers dress, in short shorts and revealing tops and all of that. And I thought that I was very sexy, and I know that a lot of girls like that feeling. Maybe every woman likes the feeling of feeling sexy. So I really relished the feeling of feeling like I was beautiful and sexy.

And the thing that I didn't know at the time was that the attention I got was not positive attention. I thought the attention I got was positive. I thought that men would look at me and think,

"She's beautiful. She's gorgeous. I like her."

Like, you know, all of just nice thoughts. But it kind of takes a little growing up to know that when guys are looking at you and giving you attention for dressing immodestly, it's not positive attention. It's kind of nasty. It's kind of gross attention. It's something that you shouldn't relish in.

So lately, the past probably two years now, I've been focusing on dressing modestly. And I thought, I just mean, don't wear ultra-revealing clothes. And by no means, I'm not accrued in the way that I dress, but I just don't wear revealing clothes anymore. For example, short shorts. I wear normal-length shorts. You know, just not to go to excess in revealing yourself. And again, it's just because you want to tell yourself and tell everyone around you that you respect yourself, you respect your body, and that not everyone has the right to see everything you have.

10. Number 10, it would be to stand up for yourself and to know that your opinion and your beliefs have value. And that by no means means to be argumentative and combative and, like, aggressive. But to not be a pushover and to, if somebody crosses a line or crosses a boundary, stick up for yourself.

And in high school, I had a lot of instances like this, where usually a guy would say something to me that was utterly disrespectful. And usually, it was a joke, but I don't believe that jokes are ever disrespectful, personally, towards you. Like, you know, it's not a joke if they're insulting you or saying something crass. So in those instances, I do wish that I had said,

"Don't talk to me that way."

You know, and you don't have to be nasty about it. You don't have to be mean, but just to say,

"It's not okay to talk to me that way."

And I really do believe that high schoolers, they're not bad people. They're not evil. They're not usually bullies. So if you tell somebody that, it's usually going to work. I have full beliefs that if I had said that to anybody, it would have worked, and they wouldn't have said anything else like that to me ever again. So just know that that, even though, like, always remind yourself,

"I'm still young and I have a lot to learn still."

And I know that, but at the same time, my values and my beliefs right now have value, and they actually have just as much value as anybody else's. That's not saying to yell and yell that you're right or to try to prove that you're right, but just to make sure that you value your thoughts.

You know that everything you say has value. So I know when I was in high school, I was a pushover. And if people crossed my values or standards, crossed my boundaries or standards, that I would just kind of put my head down. And I would not do that now. If anybody talks to me disrespectfully now, I do stand up for myself. Usually, it's more difficult if it's somebody who you care about, you know, somebody you care about is saying something disrespectful to you. It's harder to stand up because you care about what they think. But um, it's extremely important because it really is true that the respect that you demand from others, the respect that you demand towards yourself, not in a mean way, but just saying,

"You know, I deserve respect."

The way you say that, and the more you say that, that's how they're going to, but I'm messing up everything. That's how they're going to measure how worthy of respect you are. And at the same time, you have to be respectable. Obviously, you have to be a respectable person. But also, if you don't respect yourself, no one will respect you. And I know you've heard that before, and it sounds like a cliché, overused phrase, but it's absolutely true. And I know it from personal experience!

11. Eleventh thing that I would tell myself, and I know I'm saying "eleventh" instead of "number eleven." I don't know, "eleventh" sounds weird. But anyway, it would be, and this is something I'm reminding myself now, but I had to remind myself of this years ago as well. And that is, I'm reading it off my list right now,

"You don't have to live a similar life as those around you. Success is merely accomplishing what you set out to accomplish."

I wrote that down earlier. So what that means is, if all of your classmates and school are going off to be doctors and lawyers and nurses and dentists and electricians, don't compare yourself to them and their lives and their jobs, if that's not what you want to do. So I never had a desire to have a career, and so why was I comparing myself to those around me who had careers?

Even today, I met a couple of women who were extremely successful in their careers, and I was comparing myself to them and judging myself and thinking that I was a failure. And then I reminded myself,

"Wait, I don't want any of their jobs. I don't want any of their lives."

So anyway, the point is, success is just accomplishing what you set out to accomplish, and that can be small or large. If you spend your whole childhood and life dreaming of living your life on a farm, and then you get your own farm and you're living on your farm, that's success. You're successful.

So just keep that in mind. And that's something that I kind of recently learned that, like, I don't want to be super rich. I don't want to be wealthy. I don't want to be a doctor or a lawyer. I don't want to have a career. So stop comparing myself to those around me, saying they're successful and I'm not.

12. Well, the thing is pretty simple, and that is, don't trust people as much as you do. When I was in high school and when I moved out, I had a lot of faith and trust in people that I cared about. And the thing that you need to know is that even when people are not trying to hurt you, every single person in your life is going to hurt you at some point, unintentionally or intentionally. Maybe they'll be angry at you, and they'll try to hurt you in that moment, or they'll do something for themselves that will affect you negatively and hurt you.

So that's something I had to learn. There were a couple of people in my life, that I really imagined I could completely depend on and rely on, and would never hurt me ever, and that's a big lie. So just, when you're 18 years old or younger, keep in mind not to put all your faith and trust in people and know that they're going to hurt you. But also to kind of give them a break, as long as it's not abuse.

I just mean if somebody does something that hurts you, and it's usually unintentional, try to just know that it was going to happen. Like, I hope this sounds like good advice. Maybe I'm not explaining it well enough. I don't mean accept abuse. I just mean if somebody hurts you one time, and it's really hurtful, and they did not intend to hurt you or something, you know, just kind of expect that to happen because when it happened to me, it blindsided me. It just crushed me and threw me off, and I was not expecting it.

Yeah, and you don't want to be in that situation. You want to be prepared for that. You don't want to be taken off guard so dramatically.

13. I'm almost done, by the way. I have 13, 14, 15. Okay, number 13. Apart from your looks, change all the things you want to change about yourself.

Give a personal example. I have always hated how fearful I am of people, situations, things, new things. I've always been a scaredy-cat about everything new. And I mean to the extreme.

When I was 18, I was too terrified to try to drive in a city, like, and not even a large city, a small city. So I was terrified of driving, terrified of highways, terrified of downtowns. Anyway, I avoided it at all costs. And I always hated that.

I hated how scared I was of everything. Scared of people, scared of everything. So if you hate something about yourself like that, don't try hard to accept it and just be like,

"That's the way I am. I accept it, and I love myself."

First of all, that's probably not possible. And second of all, that's just kind of like giving up. So anything that you hate about yourself, you know, I'll reword it. So don't hate anything about yourself. Don't ever hate yourself. But if there are qualities that you would like to change about yourself, and if you would like to be a different person and a better person, there's nothing wrong with self-improvement.

And it's actually a good thing. So personal growth, self-improvement, working on things. I constantly am working on conquering my fear, conquering fear of everything. You don't have to try to accept every single thing about you. If it's changeable, you can change it.

And, of course, just use common sense about where the line is between accepting something about yourself and loving it or changing it. So it just needs common sense about that.

14. I'm getting tired recording this list, so I'm sure anybody watching is also getting tired watching. So I'm on number 14. The 14th thing that I would tell myself as a teenager is that all fear is learned. Fear is either ingrained in your psyche when you're a baby or, you know, in the womb, in your DNA, of things like spiders and snakes and anything that could actually physically hurt you, bears.

But most fear is irrational fear. Fear of people, fear of new situations, fear of driving. It's irrational. And just to know that all the fears you have, you can learn to not fear them. And I do know this from personal experience that I have completely made a 180 in terms of my fears.

There are certain things that I feared so much. For example, I didn't use my credit card, my first credit card, for about a year or two years. I just carried it around in my wallet, and I was too afraid to try to use it for the first time because I was terrified of messing up and looking stupid and being judged. So yeah, pretty extreme. And and obviously, that's an irrational fear. And things like using my credit card, I don't give a second thought to. So just, and then anything social, the more you do social things, the less you're going to fear it. So just know that all of those fears that you have, you can just tackle them one by one and conquer them, and you won't even get the same physical reaction.

For example, when I drove in cities, the first probably 40 times that I drove in cities, my palms would get sweaty, my heart would pound. I would have to turn off all sounds, like the radio, and I couldn’t talk to anybody because I was so focused on driving in the city and so scared. And I had all those physical reactions. And obviously, none of that happens anymore.

It’s been several years since I’ve had any kind of reaction of stress and anxiety. It was basically like I’d get a panic attack every time I tried. So just know that those, the physical feelings of fear, can go away if you keep doing it. And there are obviously limitations and exceptions. Like, I don’t think I will ever get over fear of heights. I’m always going to have a physical reaction when I’m on heights. But, you know, little things like talking to people, talking to strangers, you know, things like that.

15. The last thing I would tell myself is that your insecurities are given to you in childhood. I don’t know any research that concludes that or any scientist who says that, but it’s something that I know in my own life. It’s something that I learned has happened.

And that’s how it was for everything, about my long face, about my earlobes, and a million other things. I didn’t see those things in myself. I didn’t notice any of it until somebody told me that I should feel insecure about it.

Okay. Another thing is, not only are they given to you by the people around you in childhood, but they’re also given to you through society and through advertising and through models. So it seems like every year, I feel a little bit insecure over more and more things. Because, for example, a trend changes, like, for example, I don’t even know what trends are nowadays, but I think that curvy girls are still in the trend. So everybody says,

“Real women have curves,”

And you know, there are songs about it. And if you don’t have big curves and big, you know, then you’re not as real of a woman, not as good as a woman.

Okay. So now I feel slight insecurity about that. But no worries, I really, really love myself. I’ve learned to love my, so as far as my physical body goes, the biggest issue is trying to love my personality. That’s what I’m still tackling.

But as far as my earlobes, my crooked smile, my long face, all of that, I’m completely fine with. So I’m not insecure about those things anymore, and I’m good with my physical body. But just know, at 18 years old, don’t think that anything’s wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. Your insecurities are given to you by society and those around you.

And anybody who bullies you on something, and just know that, like, anything, like, for example, a lot of people like the things that you’re insecure about. Other things, other people want. So, for example, freckles now, there are tattoo freckles. What? So there are women out there who want freckles on their face that they’re getting tattoos of freckles on their face.

So another example is that some people think crooked smiles are super cute. And I think somebody would want my earlobes, but I don’t know. And my long face. A girl actually approached me and said she wished she had an oval face like mine. And I was like,

“I wish I had your face shape because I’ve always been jealous of girls to have more of a rounder face instead of so oval.”

So anyway, everybody wants what you have.

Okay. There are always going to be people who want what you have. And just, you know, just know that nothing’s wrong with you, and that the way that you’re feeling about yourself, you’re feeling that way because somebody gave you that insecurity. And when you can trace it back and find who gave it to you and why, and all of that, somehow that takes the insecurity away because you realized that it had no basis. It was just somebody saying a mean remark.

Alright, that’s it. Last thing is, just wanted to say none of these things were listed in order, and I’m sorry that it was so long. I don’t really care, not too many people are watching, but I hope somebody does listen to this, especially a young girl.

I really want a young girl to listen to this because I think there are a lot of things in that are going to benefit you if you actually listen. And I know I think it’s pretty impossible to listen to other people without experiencing it yourself. It’s a horrible fact of life, but it seems as if you have to make your own mistakes to learn from them for the most part.

But you can learn from other people, you know. I have listened to people’s advice and just not made certain mistakes myself.

So alright, well, I’ll see you next time.