Dear past me,

Wow! Things in the future are crazy! A virus appears and causes a pandemic. Because of this, we had to stay home and do school online. I am warning you now, this is a struggle. You love having so much time with your parents but you will miss your friends. Enjoy the time you have with them in person. You will walk and walk a lot while home because the house gets so boring.

 You will learn new things like the language Arabic and that cows can make friends. You find new ways to connect with people. You will start doing yoga with your sister over Facetime. That will take lots of time to get used to. You will see neighbors and wish you could give them a hug or just walk over to them. You will see your friends on Instagram and just wish you guys could hang out or see each other. One way I have found to help with all this is to be open to a lot of other things. I have planted a lot of plants and done many puzzles. Another way I have helped myself is to tell myself one thing that I appreciate about quarantine every day.  

I know things seem hard to you at the moment with school. But things will get better and you will feel so strong for making it. You will be so excited for your senior year. Just relax, arena scheduling will be okay and you don’t have to always please everyone. It’s harder to feel like the school year is finished because you don’t get to do any of the social activities you usually do. Just expect a whole different school year all around. One way to feel like there is closure is to keep up a routine with schoolwork for the rest of the school year. If you do this, it will help you feel like there is still some pattern in your life. Then when summer comes along, you can lose your routine and feel like the school year actually ended.

You will even miss going to all your church meetings and activities. You will miss seeing the young women every Wednesday and seeing everyone else in the ward on Sundays. You will miss singing all the songs and feeling that peace for two hours each week. You will miss having that break from all the school drama. 

There are a lot of things you will gain too. You will gain more time with your family. Your animals and you will get closer. You will learn new hairstyles and habits. You will grow stronger and smarter. You will actually get closer to your friends. I know that sounds crazy but you will. You and your friends will work harder to communicate with each other and strengthen that relationship. Creativity will be booming. Everyone will be trying to continue their lives as much as possible. You will hear from people you haven’t heard from in a long while. You will have many new friends who reach out to you on social media. 

There will be many changes, both good and bad. This will be an experience that will change your life. Just keep going and never give up because if it’s a struggle now, it will be a loved memory in the future.

From,

Future me.