Sunday Discussion: #DearMe / Advice To My Younger Self

By Nathan Young on March 8, 2015

So this week, YouTube is doing something called #DearMe. This campaign is a part of Women’s Day this weekend, but I am sure guys can do this as well! The purpose of #DearMe is to give advice to your younger self. And to empower women to be better in their lives. I have seen several #DearMe videos on YouTube, and they were pretty good. But, I wanted to make my own #DearMe video. And the video below is a little twisted, and something a little different than the other #DearMe videos.

The video below will be a little emotional and deep. The video below is about five things to expect to my younger self 25 years ago when I was 3 years old. Basically, if I was three years old and could understand the video I was watching below, this is what I would expect to see before I got to 28 years old, my age today. Enjoy below!

If you watched the video, or want to read the written post instead. I am going to talk about the five things to expect before reaching 28 years old in written form. Warning, this will be emotional and deep!

1. Expect to be abused.

Expect to be abused in your childhood. Expect to go through a very painful divorce in your early childhood, and it was painful! Expect to be kicked, punched, called bad names, made fun of, and even tied up to chairs. Expect to be stuck in your room while everyone else is doing fun. Expect to sit at the dining room table with a video camera trained on you while the rest of the family enjoys fun things. Or even expect to be locked in your room with an alarm on the door.

Expect to sit at the dining room table and starve while everyone else is having fun. Expect to go through life with an adult who is an alcoholic. You are going to go through a bunch of bad things in your childhood, but you will eventually get out of it. And when you get out of it, you can try to repair your life. I mean, you are going to try to improve things, but it’s going to be super tough!

2. Expect to be bullied.

Expect to be bullied by your siblings, their friends, other classmates, and even some adults. Expect to be bullied from the time you enter kindergarten to the time your graduate from high school. Expect to be bullied by a lot of kids in the 10 different schools you attend in your childhood. These kids who bully you will call you bad names, make fun of you, hit you, and even try to chase you down and beat you up. Some of your family will even try to send you to these so called” special autistic schools”, but some kids will bully you there as well.

All you have to do is to survive school and graduate from high school, and you will have a more peaceful life. I know, telling you to survive school and attend some special education classes is tough, but you will somehow get through it. My best piece of advice to you is to talk to the teachers. You will not make hardly any friends in school, and teachers and adults will be friendlier to you than most kids in school. You can talk to teachers after class and after school, which is how I survived school!

3. Expect to be rejected.

I know you won’t like to read this, but you are going to be rejected from a lot of things from the time you are a kid to the time you are an adult today. You are going to be rejected from schools and colleges. You are going to be rejected from thousands and thousands of job applications. Heck, just finding your first Summer job will take filling out over 100 job applications. You are going to be rejected from people who you think will help you, but instead will backstab you in the back. You are going to be rejected from other siblings, other friends, by other teachers, and by other adults.

You are going to feel rejected because other people will try to reject you or take advantage of you. Heck, some people will even call the cops on you simply because you are walking on the side of the road. You will try to help out a local TV station, only to be pushed out the door. And even the local newspaper will try to do anything possible to get you out of town. Some people are going to feel threatened about you, or feel scared about you. And some people will try to do anything necessary to get you off the streets and put you into a group home or jail.

Even though you are being rejected by a lot of people, there will be some people who see value in you, or see some opportunity in you. But, there won’t be many people who see talents in you. My advice, hook up with those few people who see promise in you. Just hook up with those people throughout your childhood and into adulthood, and you will try to improve your life up to where I am today. Let me tell you one more time, expect to be rejected a lot, but don’t let that put you down!

4. Expect to live in extreme poverty.

You are going to struggle once you graduate from high school. You are going to struggle in finding any job, and trying to stay on the job without screwing things up and being fired. Since no one will want to hire you, you will apply to thousands and thousands of places and no one will want to give you a shot. You will even try to get help from other places like career councilors and vocational rehabilitation, but no help will come from there either. You will get so desperate for cash, that you will be homeless and be living in hotels or under a bridge.

You are going to be so low in money, you will literally have one dollar left in your bank account, and you fall behind on simple bills and have creditors calling you left and right. So you need to find a way to feed yourself, and provide the basic things you need to survive, like clothes and shoes. Try to do some odd jobs like building a website for someone or doing yard work. Try to sew up holes in your clothing to make them last longer. Try to keep your computer going for as long as you can. Even try to do day labor, just do anything you can to have some money in your pocket.

You are going to be going through a lot of poverty from your childhood up to where I am at today. The reason why you have to go through extreme poverty is because no one will give you a shot. And you are going to feel pretty down and out. A lot of people will reject you and make fun of you. Try to not let that put you down, and try to do anything you can to get some cash. $20 can go a long way.

5. Expect to be depressed.

You are going to be rejected; you are going to be bullied. You are going to feel let down. You are going to even be abused. You are going to go through so much crap in your life, that you are going to feel depressed, and you are going to feel let down. Any small thing can set you off because you have gone through so many negative and bad things in your life. The negative things severely outweigh the positive things in your childhood and up to your adulthood. You are going to try to be positive when some good things are happening in your life. But, hardly any good things happen in your childhood. So, you are going to feel a lot more depressed and let down. I know it’s hard to think about that.

But, try to think positive and try to do something good. One of the things I encourage you to do is to improve your best talent you can do and draw plenty of roads. You will soon become a road drawing master! Drawing roads is the biggest thing that can have you think about something else that is not negative and bad. Other things I would do includes watching TV, playing computer games, cook, or drive around in your car to get the bad things out of your head and mind. There are a few things that you can do that will get your depressed state back into a happy mood. You have to do these things often because you will be rejected and feel let down quite a bit while growing up.

So, there you have it! If I was three years old and could see the video and/or read this post and understand what was going to happen to me, I would have my mouth on the floor and probably begging to have DHR take me away to a different family. I know, some of you are going to criticize me and say things like “quit being negative” or “quit whining”, I know, I see those comments here on the blog and on social media almost every day. But I am just trying to be real! Being realistic is something you have to be sometimes. Even while you have been rejected over 1,500 times.

I often tell people that I have gone through so much more than what 95% of other people have gone through in their lives so far or in their entire lifetimes. I have mostly seen it all, and most of it has been negative and/or sad. Everything something good and/or positive happens; sooner or later something that is negative and bigger outweighs the small good things. So today, I am still unemployed and walking for 40-50 miles a week to the library, grocery store, and to cover events.