dear fourteen old self,

life will be nothing like you thought it would be.
but it will still be okay.

you will not have those twins and that marriage at twenty-five
and you know what?
you are better off without.
this will become very obvious on that one day you are running late (what else is new?) and it is minus 40 out (what else is new?) and you shove your still wet hair into a wool toque and race outside.
there is no way you could have gotten yourself plus two small children out the door 25 minutes earlier.
and there is something sort of beautiful about that.

to your surprise, you will actually be a skeptic of marriage.
in the end, it isn't for you.
but  you know what is?
love is.
finding someone to really see and finding someone who really sees you back.
that search will outshine any white dress and gold band.

people will hurt you. immensely.
they will not apologize.
forgive them anyway
because, at the end of the day, you are the one who bears the burden.
you are the one who stays up wondering how someone could be so tactless, so hurtful, so terribly rude...
and then, well, then they have really won.
don't let them.
let it slide like water off a duck's back.
they will have to live each day knowing that they are tactless, hurtful and terribly rude.
and doesn't that just burn?

once you walk out of those dreadful teenage years, you will begin to see that only what you think matters.
no one else.
people are stubborn and slightly delusional. they will believe something because they want to. and they will create their reasoning and their proof for that belief in their head. and they will not sway.
and you know what?
it is not your job to make them sway.
you are not here to persuade. 
you are here to flourish.
so do just that.