prompt i wish i hadn’t took “
"write a letter to your ten year old self." I wrote this– and have been crying with rage ever since.
WARNING; might be triggery, for childhood ignorance and powerlessness, gender issues, whatever.
dear ten-year-old Stella;
Welcome to the sixth grade! Your teacher doesn’t actually hate you; she’s beginning to show signs of what will later be called "Alzheimer’s." Your younger sister is going to go through much worse with the old bat, two years from now, than you will.
You are in a precarious position, my dear, and there won’t be an internet to find info from. Your masturbation fantasies have a name and are not as unheard of as you think; you are a sadomasochist. It’s all right. Likewise, the romantic feeling in your stomach every time you come near Bianca Fuentes? that’s your lesbianism, and the way you like Mark Hemphill is because you like boys too; you are a Bisexual. I tell you this because I know that words help you understand things *.
You have always been a great reader, and you are about to start reading as if it were a drug. when you read Robin Hood once more, don’t worry that Maid Marion never gets to have fun in the greenwoods– that’s tired old bullshit. And when Ursula le Guin writes her book "A Wizard Of Earthsea" which tells you that only men can handle True magic– despite the fact that ged almost destroys the world with it– Please know that she will feel bad about that message… oh thirty years or so later. I’m sorry it wasn’t in time for you, because a good writer packs a lot of punch for a girl. But better than never, right?
What I am trying to say is, please don’t get your missing penis mixed up with the power that you feel is missing; the two really don’t have anything to do with each other, and you will need quite a sense of humor to deal with your gender dysphoria as it is. Put the books down, go play! Make your body strong. Roughhouse with the boys, they like that. Bianca likes to roughhouse too.
And– learn how to tie ropes. Just in case you want to be a sailor or something. Your adult self can’t keep them in her head!
My kindest regards, from
Stella
* and the words would have helped. I had nothing to do about it all as of yet, and didn’t untill sixteen-and-a-half– but damn. Another thiing i would want to tell myself is to for gods sake don’t read Masters and Johnson, or the Kinsey report. i was ashamed that i could never actually copulate with a girl, but merely engage in mutual masturbation. Since i couldn’t figure out what to do, I avoided intimacy with girls for nearly twenty fucking years.
At least youngsters now can find the words online, in some few computer-privileged cases.
And I bet you rocked in sixth grade too.
At least youngsters now can find the words online, in some few computer-privileged cases.
And I bet you rocked in sixth grade too.
At least youngsters now can find the words online, in some few computer-privileged cases.
And I bet you rocked in sixth grade too.
THanks for posting this. I can’t explain what it means to me but it means a lot.
it’s kinda incoherent, now that I read it this morning…
The person i wrote it for said; “isn’t that an awfully adult letter to a ten-year-old?”
i said; “it isn’t meant for any other ten-year-old, just me.” My issues were always sexual. ALWAYS.
My own kids are young adults now, and they had the information they needed. Sometimes more than they needed but that’s so much better than not enough.
THanks for posting this. I can’t explain what it means to me but it means a lot.
it’s kinda incoherent, now that I read it this morning…
The person i wrote it for said; “isn’t that an awfully adult letter to a ten-year-old?”
i said; “it isn’t meant for any other ten-year-old, just me.” My issues were always sexual. ALWAYS.
My own kids are young adults now, and they had the information they needed. Sometimes more than they needed but that’s so much better than not enough.
THanks for posting this. I can’t explain what it means to me but it means a lot.
it’s kinda incoherent, now that I read it this morning…
The person i wrote it for said; “isn’t that an awfully adult letter to a ten-year-old?”
i said; “it isn’t meant for any other ten-year-old, just me.” My issues were always sexual. ALWAYS.
My own kids are young adults now, and they had the information they needed. Sometimes more than they needed but that’s so much better than not enough.
A different sort of thing, but I sometimes wonder how much smarter I’d be if Google and Wikipedia had been available to me as a kid.
Is “smarter” different from “intelligence?”
Because I think both you and I, in our different ways, both suffered from too much intelligence without enough information to help us be smart about it all…
I have trouble keeping in mind the Einstein saying, “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
I would have been even more of an asshole when playing Trivial Pursuit than I was already.
A different sort of thing, but I sometimes wonder how much smarter I’d be if Google and Wikipedia had been available to me as a kid.
Is “smarter” different from “intelligence?”
Because I think both you and I, in our different ways, both suffered from too much intelligence without enough information to help us be smart about it all…
I have trouble keeping in mind the Einstein saying, “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
I would have been even more of an asshole when playing Trivial Pursuit than I was already.
A different sort of thing, but I sometimes wonder how much smarter I’d be if Google and Wikipedia had been available to me as a kid.
Is “smarter” different from “intelligence?”
Because I think both you and I, in our different ways, both suffered from too much intelligence without enough information to help us be smart about it all…
I have trouble keeping in mind the Einstein saying, “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
I would have been even more of an asshole when playing Trivial Pursuit than I was already.
*hug*
*hug*
*hug*