Now that you are an adult, what would you tell your adolescent self?
My husband came across a great article announcing a new show in the Washington D.C. area. At first I thought it was a new reality show and I got really excited, but right now it is in local theatres. The new performance is titled “Mortified,” a show that allows adults to revisit their adolescence in the presence of strangers. The crew members take entries from their teen journals and read them, dramatizing to an audience the experience of their adolescent mortification. The point for the performer is to reenact the moment, but turn it into humor, thus making it very entertaining for the audience as well as therapeutic for the performer.
This concept illustrates the idea that perhaps we never get through our adolescence. The years of growing pains are stashed away in a diary with no resolution or conclusion. Perhaps the diaries are read over at times, but for the most part, those diaries got us through the trying times when it seemed there was no one who understood us. But when did the transition between being an adolescent and becoming an adult occur? Did we just stash the diaries away one day and move forward? Or did our adolescence leave us hanging and we don’t really get over it? Perhaps that is why it is so liberating for these performers. It’s almost like a door has been locked all these years and they finally found a key to open the door and face what has been hiding all this time.
Which leads to the title of this blog. As an adult, what would you go back and tell your adolescent self in those times of mortification? Adults like to use the phrase, “someday you will look back at this and laugh.” Maybe some of that is true. Maybe adults give young adults advice because they want to take care of their adolescent self that didn’t get taken care of before. As an adult, it is as if we feel we owe it to our adolescent self to pass on wisdom that we wish we would have known then. Now we understand the pain and the after affects, so we must warn the adolescent to shield them from the years of suffering until that “better something” came along. Maybe we struggle with our adolescence until a dream comes true. Maybe none of it makes sense until that moment. Doesn’t it seem funny that once you get something you want, then it seems like anything before was worth it and seems less significant? So maybe as an adolscent it is hard to deal because you don’t know what happens in your adult life. And as an adult its hard not to reassure adolescents that once that dream comes true, you will not give that mortification a second visit.
So I would go back and tell my adolescent self exactly this: You are going to struggle for a really, really long time. Until you decide you want to like yourself, no one in the world can make you believe it. Life sucks sometimes and there is nothing you can do about it. Maybe one day it will be better, but until then, find those who really understand you. If its only your diary, then write until you can’t write anymore. Tell the diary everything you possibly want. But if you do write it in, make sure to keep it so you can look at one day and laugh and cry at how far you have come.
