Letter To My Seventeen Year Old Self

Dear Seventeen-Year-Old Sophie,

I visited Bath Spa’s campus yesterday for the first time in a few years. It’s so beautiful in autumn with the leaves changing and the cows grazing. I know you’ve seen it for the first time recently. How you were stunned and in love with it even in the rain. I want you to hold onto that feeling for as long as possible. I want you to see the beauty in the puddles, the reflection of the sky that they hold. In the winter, I want you to notice the fog sliding through the trees. I want you to smile at your breath misting in the air. I want you to notice the daffodils in the spring, dare to pick one and watch it wither in your room. I want you to walk by the lake as summer starts, forgetting who you are and where you’ve come from because yesterday the water was grey but today it is blue.

You have experienced so many challenges already, but you’ve brushed them all off. You’ve become the person you always dreamed of being, and soon, you’ll realise you could have had even more if you’d tried. More of what you thrived on and less of the wasted nights awake watching people play videos games and drink beer.

But I’m not mad at you. Everyone needs that. Everyone needs to experience the lows to appreciate the highs; and trust me, you’ve got some bigger lows ahead of you. The lows will lead you to days and weeks going by without opening a notepad. Without clicking on a camera, and only half heartedly opening a book. This will not make you a failure. This will make you a fighter for the highs. They will take you soaring across the sea, standing in front of your heroes and sitting aside other ones. They will bump you into new, lifelong friends, and take you travelling across the world. They will ensure you are grasping, always grasping, for the next big dream.

And then you’ll come back. You’ll come back after all of this and see the place you first ran away to. The place where your heart broke for the first time, the place you wrote the first stories, began discovering your voice, and prodding your fingers into memories that are too big to be dealt with alone, but you’ll try to anyway. You’ll see the place that was yours. The first place you were proud to call home, but two years later ran away from hard and fast. You’ll be flooded with memories on every corner. In every nook and cranny, because that town has no hiding spaces.

And it won’t be yours anymore. You’ll look around with strangers eyes, and wonder how it got this way. You’ll wonder if you did enough. If you should have stayed. If you went to the right place. You’ll wonder if you’ll ever stop running, and if so, where you’ll stop to catch your breath.

I wish I could be answering these questions for you, not asking them. But the truth is, I don’t know myself. The journey is rough, and it’s still only just beginning. Please, invest in some good walking shoes.