Inner Child Healing: A Letter to my 16-year-old Self

Dear Katie,

Oh, girl. Your sixteenth year is a wild ride. 2003-2004 is truly one of the most transformative periods of your life. Parts of it will be so good. Euphoric even. But you’re also about to endure the most intense pain you’ll ever feel.

And feel you will. You will feel everything very deeply. This is partially due to the fact that you have an undiagnosed mental illness and a few trauma-based disorders looming around the corner. You’re not going to realize this for a couple decades, so grab some tissues and buckle up.

Let’s talk about the good stuff for a minute. This is the most creative time of your life, so keep a pen and paper handy. You’re the yearbook editor this year and you’re about to get really into creative writing, too. This will give you purpose and something to focus on when you’re sad. Even when the bad stuff comes, writing will get you through the pain. You’ll become really good at angsty poetry. You’re in flow right now and you’ll be trying to get back there for the rest of your life. The fire you feel this year will be hard to tap into again. Keep writing.

I bet you’re wondering about your love life. Neither you nor the guy you’re dating are emotionally intelligent enough yet to make it work. But you’ll cherish the songs he wrote about you even after he blocks you on social media in a few years. I’ll tell you what social media is later.

You’ll meet another character relevant to this story soon. Spoiler alert: Neither one of these guys is your person. In two years, you’ll meet the one who will eventually love you the way you deserve.

Don’t freak out when you realize you’re attracted to girls, too. You are and that’s ok. I know you’re confused because you don’t feel like it’s a 50/50 split. Sexuality actually exists on a spectrum even though that’s not how it was presented to you in health class. Florida education isn’t great.

The end of 2003 is a real doozy. You lose your virginity on December 7, a day that will live in infamy. (Dark humor is one of your coping mechanisms, btw.) That new character I mentioned played The Beatles’ Abbey Road album for the main event. Forever after, you’ll be mad at him for tainting such an iconic album and you’ll wish you had lost your virginity to some early 2000s bullshit like Yellowcard or Alien Ant Farm or something. Oh well.

Anyway, a few weeks later on December 31 is when shit gets real bad. (You prob don’t know what a “trigger warning” is yet, but this is where you put one for future reference.) Sit down and take a deep breath.

You’re going to get raped at a party. It’s going to change you forever.

It’s some rando who goes to school with you. He’s much bigger and stronger than you are. You’re going to try to get away and scream, but he’s going to hold you down and cover your mouth. After what feels like hours, but could have been any length of time, you’ll think that the door opening is one of your friends coming to save you. It’s actually one of his friends who enters to jerk off to you getting raped while you lay there, paralyzed and powerless, silently crying. In the morning when you think the pain is finally over, the girls at the party will call you a slut and laugh. That hurts almost as much as the physical pain, doesn’t it?

You will feel like it’s your fault. Like it was something you did or you asked for. It was not your fault. You’ll try to block it out of your mind and you succeed for a while. But the reality of it hits you again when you hear he bragged about the rape at school. And yes, he called it that. I know.

You’re going to have a really complicated relationship with sex after. With men in general, really. And friends, too. You’ll be afraid of alcohol, of course, only until you make a complete 180 years later and use excessive binge drinking to cope. You’ll take a break from parties and you’ll throw yourself into “work” (which at this time, is yearbook because you’re 16). You’ll run around with your camera at school dances, watching the fun from the outside because allowing yourself to be part of it might lead to more pain.

And, unfortunately, you’re going to get unbearably sad every New Year’s Eve, like clockwork. At a time when everyone else is popping confetti and sharing their highlight reel for the present year and their goals for the year ahead. The pressure of a midnight kiss will make you sick to your stomach for many years to come.

Eventually, you’ll stuff it down with all of the other icky memories, and emotions, and feelings you never learned how to feel. You’ll find out the hard way that you can’t avoid your feelings forever. You’ll bottle it all for years until you explode in a crazy spiritual awakening in 2021 at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. Seriously. There’s much more, but that chapter, my dear, requires its own letter.

After the NYE incident, you’re not going to get your period for over four months. Naturally, since this was your first month of doing anything sexual ever, you’re terrified because you think you’re either having a little consensual surfer baby or a nonconsensual rape baby. You don’t want either baby.

Looking back, it makes sense that trauma caused your body to shut down. Sexual violence is associated with gynecological problems, including irregular menstrual cycles, urinary tract infections, and pelvic pain. Trauma can flood your body with cortisol which can stop your period from coming. It’s likely why you develop PCOS soon because your hormones are fucked the fuck up. (You’re going to have to deal with all of that for a long time and it’s going to fucking suck.)

So, you buy pregnancy tests in bulk and take them all the time… until one day when your mom finds one in your purse… and then tears apart your room to read your diary and all your angsty poetry… and then freaks out on you so much that she’s sent to the hospital for a possible heart attack. This day is a no-good, very bad day. You inherited your emotional dysregulation honestly.

You never told her what happened, so she’s going to start doing a lot of stuff to cope with what she thinks is going on. This includes, but is not limited to, reading Reviving Ophelia in front of you, going to Tony Robbins conventions, and making you become a vegan. Try not to take it personally. She’s not your favorite at this point, but that’ll change. One day you’ll realize you inherited your communication issues just like she did. She’ll realize this too. When we know better, we do better. You love her so much.

When your period finally comes in like April of 2004, one of your friends is going to make you a hilarious period cake with surprise red filling that floods out from the center. She’ll bring party hats for all of us to wear while we eat it in yearbook class. And yes, if you’re wondering, you are still friends. She just had a baby! We’re happy about babies now.

There’s a lot more that goes down between your 16th year and your 36th year. In more recent news, you kind of have a mental breakdown after spending a year inside because a deadly virus caused the world to shut down and it was basically illegal to go outside in New York City. (You live in NYC, btw!!) For real. But that experience led to this healing journey which is still going strong today, New Year’s Eve 2023.

This used to be the anniversary of the day we got raped, but now it’s the anniversary of the day we quit alcohol. One year today! So, little Katie, shit’s going to be rough for a minute, or a few minutes, but it’ll all make more sense one day. We’re still figuring it out, but it gets better. Happy New Year.

Love,
Katie