{"id":5401,"date":"2012-11-06T14:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T19:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=5401"},"modified":"2012-11-05T21:31:13","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T02:31:13","slug":"dear-teen-anonymous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/dear-teen-anonymous\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Teen Anonymous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Teen A.,<\/p>\n

I wanted to catch you while you are 13 and things are still \u201cnormal\u201d\u009d. I know that you aren\u2019t comfortable admitting it yet, so I\u2019ll say it for you: your normal is not everyone else\u2019s normal. Your home life is unusual, rocky, dysfunctional, pick your favorite negative descriptor. It is okay, in fact go ahead and embrace it (and start taking notes). You will be able to tell great stories at parties someday.<\/p>\n

I am writing now to warn you. In the next year two diseases will infect your home; addiction and mental illness will wreak havoc. If you really think about it, you\u2019ll realize that these two have been hiding just around the corner for as long as you can remember. It is going to be awful for you. What is now dysfunctional will become unendurable. The important thing for you to know is that it won\u2019t be forever. In a few years you will be able to make your own life somewhere else. Your experiences during your teen years will totally suck (sorry), but they will help you become the grown up that I am now. And I am a good one.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need to tell you what to do, because you will be fine. You have good instincts and you will manage to take care of yourself. But I will offer some advice to make it a little easier on you now and in our future:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You won\u2019t get any taller, so stop waiting for it.<\/li>\n
  2. Be kinder to your mother, it is not her fault.<\/li>\n
  3. Let people in. You\u2019ll be inclined to build a hard outer shell to protect yourself and it will, but it will also prevent you from building relationships. People will help you through this and more, so let them.<\/li>\n
  4. Run. When the track coach asks you to go out for the team, say yes. Don\u2019t wait decades to start running. It will be such a help to you now. Drop those stupid teenage excuses (yes, I know how you feel about the uniforms) and run.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You won\u2019t believe where I am now and I\u2019m not going to tell you. But I will tell you that you have some wonderful surprises waiting for you. Get through this rough patch (aka your teens) and move on.<\/p>\n

    Be careful,<\/p>\n

    A. Nonymous<\/p>\n

    Recognizing that \u201cinternet privacy\u201d\u009d is an oxymoron and wishing to protect the privacy of family members who made mistakes years ago and family members who are still struggling with illness, the author of this blog post has chosen to remain anonymous. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Dear Teen A., I wanted to catch you while you are 13 and things are still \u201cnormal\u201d\u009d. I know that you aren\u2019t comfortable admitting it yet, so I\u2019ll say it for you: your normal is not everyone else\u2019s normal. Your home life is unusual, rocky, dysfunctional, pick your favorite negative descriptor. It is okay, in fact go ahead and embrace it (and start taking notes). You will be able to tell great stories at parties someday. I am writing now to warn you. In the next year two diseases will infect your home; addiction and mental illness will wreak havoc. If you really think about it, you\u2019ll realize that these two have been hiding just around the corner for as long as you can remember. It is going to be awful for you. What is now dysfunctional will become unendurable. The important thing for you to know is that it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[313],"class_list":["post-5401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloggers","tag-dear-teen-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}