2am notes to self

I couldn’t really sleep last night. I have an aggressive sinus infection that’s doing its best to ruin my life. So around 2am I lay awake in bed thinking. Luckily, I didn’t think too much about anything stressful (other than the fact that my sinuses are inflamed and I can’t breathe). But other than that I mostly kept thinking about me as a little girl and then a teenager and then a young adult. I started imaging what it would be like to talk to those versions of myself. This isn’t new for me, it’s something I think about often. And usually the thing I imagine myself saying to those younger Sheena’s is the same.

If I could go back and tell every version of my younger self one thing it would be that the hard moments pass and almost always fear is just an extreme avoidance of temporary discomfort that I inevitably always get through only to find a greater possibility on the other side.

Heartbreak = temporary

Love = infinite

I’d probably also tell myself that fear hardens us. It puts us on the defense and it causes us to act in ways that feel unnatural for us because they are. Because naturally we’re soft. Naturally we trust.

But the fear stuff is a different post.

At one point in the night my thoughts shifted from things I’d say to those younger me’s, to what those younger versions would tell me today. Thinking of things this way brought forward memories I hadn’t recalled in a long long time. Here’s one I wanted to share.

When I was around 9 my parents let me spend the night at a girl's house who lived at the end of our block. Her name was Corinne; she was a little older, maybe 12 or so, and she was having a sleepover with other girls who were around her age. I was nervous and excited. I really wanted to fit in and have fun but I also knew Corinne could be mean. She would bully me sometimes and treated me like I was inferior because I was a few years younger. Part of the reason why I continued to spend time with her was because she was one of the only other girls who lived on my block. But another reason was because I didn’t actually believe anything she said. Looking back I remember thinking she was kind of blind to not realize how amazing of a 9 year old I was and I think I mostly just assumed she was jealous of me.

So the night of the sleepover came and being the introvert that I am, I was one of the first girls to get into bed. I laid on the top bunk of a bunk bed with my eyes shut while the other girls chatted and laughed. At a certain point they assumed I was asleep and started talking about me. I remember feeling paralyzed by some of the hurtful things they were saying.

“She thinks she’s so pretty but she has frizzy hair and is kind of fat.”

“Why did you even invite her Corinne?”

“My mom made me. She’s just a kid from down the street.”

Finally, one of them had the brilliant idea of putting toothpaste in my hand and tickling my face. Right as they were about to fill my palm with toothpaste I popped up in bed and yelled,

“STOP! I am awake.”

They. Were. Stunned.

Then 9 year old me looked at each and every one of them in the face before saying:

“I heard everything you guys said about me and here’s what I have to say to you… I don’t ‘think’ I’m pretty. I know I’m pretty. And Corinne, if you don’t want me here. I will go home.”

And I did! I called my mom and went home.

9 year old me was a fkn baddie. And to be honest there are a million situations in adulthood where I could have used that kind of self confidence and trust. That night, I didn’t shrink. I stood up, I spoke up, and I walked out. I didn’t question my worth. I declared it. And I wish more grown-up versions of me had remembered her.