A letter from January 19th, 2017

Dear FutureMe, Happy 20th birthday. You will probably remember writing this when you were 16. I hope a lot of good things have happened in the past 4 years. Idealistically you will have gotten straight As in your A levels and gotten into university to study computer science and mathematics but deep down this will probably not be the case. You are stupid and immature. You have lied to yourself for too long. No matter how much you study you cannot change natural intelligence and so you will never reach perfection. Even if you get an A you will focus on the A* you did not get. This is what is causing your self-diagnosed depression, you are scared to know the truth. You are immature and have never done anything significant for yourself. You got told about a good job that you wanted but got scared about being in the real world so applied five days later. I am guessing you did not get it. Going to university is what you want most but is what scares you most of all. You are a fiercely independent person, which is sometimes at a detremrent as you are stubborn and refuse to ask for help, making university sound like a good idea. You have chosen a course but not the university so it is not too real. If you are at university you are probably focusing on after graduating as you are never happy in the present. Enjoy every moment of your life because you only have a finite time before you die old and alone, then what will you have? Nothing. You want to be a teacher to give your life meaning but everything will be destroyed anyway so what is the point? There is none. You keep daydreaming about having a boyfriend but deep down you know that is not going to happen. You in your dreams is a completely different person than you and you watch the relationship play out in third person as if watching a TV show. This will not stop you dreaming. Stop wasting your time on a hypothetical relationship you know you will never have. From a very depressed 16 year old.