{"id":4569,"date":"2018-11-14T09:10:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=4569"},"modified":"2018-11-14T09:10:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:10:30","slug":"dear-kai-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2018\/11\/14\/dear-kai-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Kai of the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Kai of the past,<\/p>\n<p>Hey, it&#8217;s me. Your older self. I know Kai isn&#8217;t your name, but it will be what you go by when you get older. You&#8217;re probably wondering why I&#8217;m writing to you. It&#8217;s because I have a lot to tell you.<\/p>\n<p>I know growing up seems scary. You&#8217;re going to dread hitting double digits for the first time, and from there, you&#8217;ll dread turning eighteen. I&#8217;m not eighteen yet, though- I still have a year to go. But that&#8217;s beside the point.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll grow up being the perfect child. You&#8217;ll make good grades, and you&#8217;ll be confident in yourself. At least, for a while. You&#8217;ll begin to fall behind in Spanish class. You won&#8217;t do so well in biology. And you&#8217;ll start to doubt yourself. Don&#8217;t put all your self-worth on your grades- or maybe you already have, and I&#8217;m writing to a slightly-older version of myself than I had thought I was.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, you&#8217;re going to change. Your hair will grow long, and then you&#8217;ll cut it off and donate it to charity- twice. You&#8217;ll want to paint your nails black, and you&#8217;ll have a mixed relationship with makeup. You&#8217;ll start to have fights with your dad because you want more freedoms than what he gives you. Trivial things will seem like important things. You&#8217;ll probably make several mountains out of the smallest molehills.<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t worry. At this time, most things have worked themselves out. You know that art school that you drive by when you go visit your grandma? You&#8217;ll be there someday. Yeah, you won&#8217;t graduate with your old friends, but you&#8217;ll make new ones there, and they&#8217;ll really accept you for who you are.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll learn more about yourself. You&#8217;ll learn your favorite color (purple), your least favorite color (pink), your favorite temperature to eat pizza (cold), and you&#8217;ll learn what a mitochondria is (the powerhouse of the cell).<\/p>\n<p>Change can be scary. You&#8217;ll still be nervous about moving into the dorm, and you&#8217;ll worry about grades until the end of time. But don&#8217;t worry too much- you&#8217;ll have a high enough ACT score that you&#8217;re sure you can get into college.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and one more thing. Don&#8217;t be afraid to express yourself. Don&#8217;t hide what you feel. Speak out against injustices. Tell your parents when something they say hurts your feelings. And for the love of God, be nice to your sister.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all I have to say. I hope you have a nice childhood.<\/p>\n<p>Love, your older self.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. That shirt you lost is behind the desk in your room. You&#8217;re welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Kai of the past, Hey, it&#8217;s me. Your older self. I know Kai isn&#8217;t your name, but it will be what you go by when you get older. You&#8217;re probably wondering why I&#8217;m writing to you. It&#8217;s because I have a lot to tell you. I know growing up seems scary. You&#8217;re going to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2018\/11\/14\/dear-kai-of-the-past\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dear Kai of the Past&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4572,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions\/4572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}