Mike Jung
It’s good that I’m sending you a letter from here in the future, because I know it’s not likely you’d trust me if I tried to talk to you in person. You don’t trust many people, and honestly, why would you? You’re fifteen, and fifteen, for you, was a monstrously bad year. Right now you can’t even remember a time when your life wasn’t all about bullies, bullies, bullies—they’ve verbally laid into you every day for the past four years, and it’s gotten physical more than a few times as well. That’s approximately a thousand days of hearing all the reasons why you’re such a catastrophic loser: your face, clothes, skin, hair, lack of athletic ability, fondness for role-playing games, awkwardness with girls, bookworm tendencies, and ethnicity are all fair game.
It’s also clear that no help is forthcoming. For example, there was that teacher who stood and watched through the locker room window as a cluster of bigger guys pushed you into a corner locker and showered you with racist, homophobic taunts, preventing you from getting dressed until the room was emptied out. And the fact that you’re at least a year younger than everyone else in the room doesn’t make things any easier—your suspicion that your parents were wrong about moving you up a grade is 192 percent confirmed.
Yep, good times. There are two years of high school left to go—you’re looking at another 500 days of similar treatment—but the damage has already been done. The bullies and critics have convinced you that they’re right. You despise yourself.
I’m genuinely sorry. You’re in emotional agony, you feel desperately alone, and you can’t engage with the good things and amazing people that are actually there for you. In fact, fifteen is the age when you first truly consider the most extreme way out. Anger and bitterness—at your so-called peers, at your family, at the entire, unfeeling universe—nearly consume you, and in the years to come you’ll spend more than one sleepless night deciding whether or not to go on living.
I get it, you know? You don’t see any other solution. But there is another way—although it’s a hard one. You can hang in there, deal with the loneliness and feelings of worthlessness as best you can, and wait it out. You want to get through this, my friend. I know it feels like things will never change, but they will (although in all honestly it’s going to be a while longer).
You’ll spend a long string of years coping with your rage, fleeing the black hole of depression, and struggling to make yourself whole again. You’ll self-medicate. You won’t date very many people, and when you do, your decision-making will be, um, questionable. And every time you see another human being, you’ll instinctively turn away, because nearly every person on the planet looks like a slavering monster-in-waiting. But eventually you’ll discover that the seeds of compassion, kindness, and generosity are still within you. It’s very, very important that you keep those seeds alive, because later in life you’ll finally learn how to make them grow.
It’s not a given that those seeds of kindness will sprout, you know—in fact, there’ll be times when you’ll act in the same brutish, inexcusable manner as your tormenters. There’ll be an incident later in your junior year involving a guy in your class who deals with some of the same treatment you do. The two of you have already spent a lot of time trying to humiliate each other, which is regrettable on so, so many levels, but one day you’ll go too far. You’ll circulate a questionnaire asking if this guy is the world’s biggest…let’s say orifice. It’ll be a senseless, stupid act of cruelty, and while you might not deserve to be thrown headfirst into a wall (which is what’ll happen—watch your head, chief), it won’t be hard to understand the intensity of his reaction. The goose egg on your forehead will heal, but the loose thread in your moral fiber is probably still there to this day.
Thankfully, you won’t go permanently down that road. That’s not to say you lack a normal range of moronic tendencies, or that you’ll never hurt anyone ever again, but after years of soul-searching and self-discovery it’ll be possible to describe you as a decent guy. I know, “decent guy” lacks the high-school sizzle of things like “rock star,” “babe magnet,” or “party animal.” You’ll never morph into any of those things (although you’ll occasionally humiliate the bejesus out of yourself in trying). It’s easy to underestimate the value of being a decent guy, but it’s what saves you in the end.
I’m not saying your future “oh hooray, I’m a decent guy” self-assessment will fix everything, because it won’t. You feel broken at fifteen, and you’ll still feel somewhat broken at my age. You’ll still struggle in group situations, commit an atrocious variety of social blunders, and second-guess yourself on a continual basis. But you’ll also understand who you are, accept who you are, and—miraculously—kinda sorta like who you are.
I know, you’re thinking, “BUT HOW?” I’m afraid there won’t be some clear-cut transformational moment when everything changes. What you’ll do instead is retract your extremities like a turtle, and seek refuge in creativity—both other people’s, and your own.
For example, there’s music. Being a band geek isn’t sufficient though, right? So instead, you become the first male flutist at your high school in what, twenty years? It’s like writing, “PLEASE BEAT ME SENSELESS,” on your forehead. However, every so often, someone tells you how much they respect that choice. At your age, it means nothing to hear that, but those little comments are piling up in your subconscious.
You’ll keep making art, and for years that’ll be your one reliable source of validation from the world. You’ll copy down hundreds of superheroes, monsters, and other characters from pop culture, and then later on you’ll create your own characters. You’ll still occasionally hear about the Turtle Mafia decades later, for example—one friend will even remember that you came up with that before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. More of those comments piling up, right?
You’ll continue to submerge yourself in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and comic books galore. You’ll absorb those books. You don’t even know how much you’re learning, but the incessant reading and drawing will become a thermonuclear source of internalized storytelling knowledge.
Eventually you’ll hit this sweet spot where people actually want to hear your stories! It’ll make all the difference. You’ll always struggle to build relationships, but there are people you’ll love, and who’ll love you back. Sometimes it’ll be complicated, or painful, or just plain weird, but other times it’ll be glorious. On some days you’ll feel the weight of life’s cruelty and unfairness, and you’ll shrug it off, because the different kinds of love you’ll feel for so many people will propel you forward like psychological rocket fuel. You’ll love your wife and children above all, but you’ll also love the friends you make in all areas of life, especially in the world of children’s literature. And your writing career will provide a slew of opportunities to express that love—which happens to be something you do better than almost anything else.
I won’t press you to remember that time is on your side, because I enjoy the benefit of hindsight—time was on your side, though, and you made it! It seems miraculous, considering all the self-destructive choices you’ll make just between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. In a way, you will try to take your own life, but in a long, slow, downward-spiral sort of way. In the end, however, you’ll choose to live. You’ll finally realize you’re not the waste of space so many people have said you were. Right now, you’re laying a foundation for the rest of your life, and when you reach the place where I am now it’ll feel like the world is absolutely exploding with possibilities. It’s gonna be amazing!
Hang in there, pal. You’ll be glad you did, and you won’t be the only one.
Mike Jung is alive and well and living in Northern California—which is good because, you know, he likes it there. In a show of highly suspect judgment, his wife and two children live there with him. Mike’s debut middle-grade novel, Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities, will be released in fall 2012.