Unsolicited Advice to Myself: Love, Women, and the Eternally Incomprehensible

When I was younger and only slightly more naive than I am now, my conceptions of the world and my place in it hinged on that typical adolescent brand of negativity. My future, I surmised, wasn’t to be based  in any positive sense on the lives of those that came before me. Rather, the idea was to see the world, scowl, and rebel – with extreme prejudice – against most of it.

Looking back, though, it’s clear most of it was a rebellion against the most basic precepts of being an adult. Credit cards, business casual, alcohol, relationships – my oftentimes harsh opinions of these things hinged on premature opposition and, in retrospect, a certain subtle and unconscious fear. Being a callous youth was really about being afraid of growing up. That much is certain.

Equally certain is this: If I somehow managed to travel to the past and meet with my sixteen year-old self, our conversation would involve a great deal of overt skepticism on his part and and equally present degree of sophomoric pedagogy on mine. I would have so much to teach myself, if only he would stop listening to Kid A long enough to actually listen.

And thus below we find a hypothetical conversation between versions of myself split by six years of experience, learning, and, only a slight bit of regret. What’s key to note is the format of this exchange, which, due to some complex array of time-dilation-and-special-relativity-induced complications, is forced to take the form of, no surprise, an instant message conversation. Omitted is the first hour of discussion, this for reasons that have more to do with the generally predictable narrative arc that the conversation would likely take (declaration of identity, ardently dubious response followed by intrigued and slightly-bemused confirmation of identity, etc, etc) than anything else. We begin at the meat and gristle: women.

Image courtesy of laughlin