What would you tell your 18 year old self?
What would you tell your 18 year old self?
Doesn't matter, wouldn't have listened.
34Real
4
Three things.
- Brush your damn teeth.
- Spend time with your elderly family members while you still can.
- Compound interest.
32Last year, when my daughter moved to college, I wrote her a letter containing my best advice.
Brush your damn teeth was at the top.
And I extend this advice to ANYONE ELSE who needs it.
A fucked tooth is one of the most painful things I've ever experienced, and the way you fix it, is to pull it. And it NEVER comes back. Repeat this a few times and you're embarrassed to smile in front of anyone. It really messes with your self worth, and there's no coming back.
Please, brush your damn teeth, and don't start smoking.
Please everyone,
14My kids think I'm annoying for nagging them about their teeth, but I'm on a mouth fixing journey due to medical tooth loss and it is slow, painful, expensive, and embarrassing. People think I either do drugs or never learned to brush my teeth and I'd hate to see my kids go through that. It's a secondary reason to my continued masking in public and masking is absolutely the only reason I was able to find the job I have. Not that I am unqualified, but if I had smiled in an interview I never would have been called back.
4
Do NOT enlist in the military. They will use you, leave you mentally and emotionally fucked, and leave you by the side of the road when they're done.
27You aren't lazy, you aren't undisciplined, you just have ADHD. get that shit diagnosed and treated or you'll lose your full ride scholarship.
A desk job is fine, and you're good at programming. Don't be afraid to major in something computer related.
BTC is a scam but buy a lot of it as early as possible, it'll peak around 65k. God doesn't exist, the republicans are fucking ghouls
25GET OUT OF MY HEAD
7❤
2
If a girl invites you back for coffee, don't decline because you don't like coffee. She is probably the one who would send you your first Valentine's card a few months.
Delay your mother for just a minute on this specific day in 1997, you will save her life.
Go and see Sasha on this day in 2019. She's going to die and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
22
21Permanently Deleted
3
Most of your problems are due to undiagnosed ADHD.
19In November 2020, you will invest all your money into Gamestop. Sell once the price hits $200.
18- Don't date her.
- Don't ever start drinking.
- Turns out you're gay and you don't know it yet.
16- If someone is willing to cheat with you, they'll cheat on you too
- Stay away from cocaine
- compound interest
- Delayed gratification is usually worth it
13DONT START SMOKING.
12This is the way!
2
Buy bitcoin.
12Dump your highschool sweetheart, she's a cheating bitch when she goes off to college. Instead, date the girl you liked for 3 years but she didn't come around until you started dating the one who broke your heart. Though she was late to the game, and broke your heart 3 years straight... when she came to you with that 12 page letter, she was legit. She found and married the guy who was just like you and they lived happily... until covid killed her early on in the covid saga. But if she'd married me, she wouldn't have been in Georgia. She'd still probably have been a nurse, but not there. She might still be alive. Oh, and that rebound gal you dated, knocked up and married after the first gal, the cheater, broke your heart? She widows you. And shit just gets worse from there.
12Yikes
7
Do not ever start that PhD, and keep on passing on shit you are not interested in. Especially when others say they are too good of an opportunity to pass. Otherwise keep going, little dude!
11Currently doing a phd and wishing I could go back in time and tell myself not to fucking do it. They really get you with that opportunity bullshit but the whole thing is a fucking pyramid scheme imo.
3It feels like it is, nicely coupled with the worst dependency on a superior I have ever experienced in my life. And this whole working for the collective knowledge of the community is bs to, including double-blind processes in paper reviews. You got to make sure the reviewers know who you are, and they make sure you know who they are ("how about you cite these 3 papers that are super relevant and just by coincidence come from the same author?"). Anyway, all the best to you!
2
I turn 18 in around a month... I guess I'd tell him to take care of himself and keep working on being less anxious, though I doubt he'd actually do it.
10Take care of your teeth and learn as much as you can. Your teeth don't heal and are never considered in health care, and there really isn't such thing as irrelevant knowledge.
4I have braces right now and it's very uncomfortable to have anything stuck in there, so I do take extra care of my oral health at the moment. Fortunately I'll have free dental care for the foreseeable future, given that I'm going into uni and then healthcare (this is how it works where I live).
Agreed on lifelong learning, I want to (somewhat) be able to keep up with the world changing as I get older.
1
You don't have super powers, you're not having a "spiritual crisis," you have ADHD and you're losing your shit. See a doctor. Medicine is good.
That's it. That would basically rewrite the last 18 years of my life (not that it's been bad, but I lost out on doing cool stuff in my 20s to figuring out I had, and how to deal with, my mental illness)
10Two things: you have ADHD, learn how to deal with it now or things will get worse.
The other thing would be a hint on where to find my current SO.
Nothing I could change would affect her path in life up until I meet her. Our lives are very separate.
9All the ADHDers in here. :(
Same. Same.
9Pull out.
9"No one will care about the GED. You did the right thing dropping out of that bullshit. You'll get into college next year."
Incidentally, nothing on that GED was anything I hadn't learned by middle school. I got an 'honors' GED because it was so fucking easy. I'm not trying to brag. I don't think I'm some kind of genius. It was just really easy. And then I spent the next decade, even though I did get into college, thinking people would think I was a fraud because I took the easy way out.
It all changed when I got invited to my 10 year high school reunion and realized even they didn't care.
8I would still be a housekeeper if I hadn't taken the GED. It was easy because it takes real ife experience in to account.
2
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8Strive for independence with every fiber of your being. Your family that you live with doesn't love you.
That's why they're dicks to you. They lie and tell you it's "for your own good" or some other bullshit. But really they're afraid to admit that they don't know how to love you... They may not know how to love anyone.
Being grounded for 2/3 of the year every year - when you have no disciplinary or legal troubles - is imprisonment, it is not just punishment. Making you eat vomit is not an important life lesson, it is abuse. A person who openly favors one child over the other doesn't love any of her children, least of all you.
Your brothers learned to love from someone incapable of loving. That's why they are indifferent to your suffering. That's why they only care what you can do for them and feel no obligation to do anything that benefits you.
You can't snap your fingers and be independent. But it is within your grasp if you reach for it. Reach for it with your entire being.
Your dad is reaching out now because you're 18 and he doesn't have to deal with a psycho to get ahold of you anymore. Hold him accountable, but trust his intentions. He's rusty at relating, but let him show you how much he loves you. And use that to remind you of how much the others don't.
8Smarten the fuck up, fucking graduate and then get your ass out of that Podunk town and get a real fucking job ASAP. You're worth more than they let you think you are.
8Your resiliency matters more than your fear of making a mistake, and you’ll never cover any ground if you can’t take a step.
8There’s a book called “chasing failure” by Ryan Leek that covers this really well. When you reframe what failure and success look like to you it opens up a lot of opportunities you’d never know were there!
5I’ll have to look that one up, thank you!
1
Move to Germany. Don't waste your time in North America.
8Don't. Marry. Her.
8I knew scrolling down I'd find this so I can vote it.
1Fuck me.
(and the Sunday sun shines down on San Fransisco bay, and you realise you can't make it anyway)
1
Don't sell your punk rock record collection
8- You'll survive those few days of 25C. Believe me, you'll wish for them soon enough when stuck with 40C days in spring.
- You'll have fun
- You'll marry (eventually)
- Believe the doctor on the underwear part
- You won't have kids, it worked
- in 100 years, nothing will matter, go have fun and talk to girls. ;)
8Get on ADHD meds. The diagnosis is right there, use it. Life’s better on meds and things make a lot more sense.
71.) Drop out of high school and get your GED before your principal tells you to.
2.) Tell the high-school GF to hit the road. She's no good, and on some level, you know it.
3.) When the army recruiter comes around, tell him no. Do not be polite. Do not offer a reason.
4.) That half a semester of drafting you did in the 9th grade? Keep going down that road, don't wait until your 30s.
7tell someone you're depressed.
7invest in bitcoins
7Oh man, I could have bought so many Bitcoins back when it started and they were worth like $0.0009. Ah well.
3Back then there was a website that would gift you some.
I bought about $50 at the time, but didn’t hold on to it because why. At some point I checked and still had a little bit of a balance, used it to build a nice computer in 2013.
Could’ve paid cash for a very nice house if I hadn’t touched it at all, but most people weren’t thinking that way and it was originally meant to be used.
5
I had bitcoins when it was worthless and lost the wallet they were on. Would have been a decent amount had I taken it seriously. So yeah, I agree with you!
3
It never gets better.
People's hatred of the other is a religion to them. They define themselves by who they dehumanize. They will never stop dehumanizing you because they need to do so to cope with their own self-hatred.
No one will ever accept you, because accepting you, in their own twisted minds, is killing themselves.
7I know this is much easier to say than it is to internalize and believe, but it doesn't matter what any singular person thinks about you. There are people out there who do their best to understand and accept you as you are, without using what they learned to make half-assed guesses about the rest of who you are. They may be few and far between (or maybe not), but I know they exist. As soon as you start looking for those who accept you instead of trying to be accepted by those who don't, you'll be on a better course. And don't be afraid of anti-depressants. Depression makes yiu want to give up on fighting, makes you think nothing can help. It's a lie by which the illness sustains itself. By listening to that lie, you may protect yourself from harm, but you'll also "protect" yourself from finding happiness.
And remember, parents, old friends, etc. who don't necessarily get you too well aren't necessarily trying to be cruel, but you may never have quite the relationship with them you wish you could. They have their own problems from their own anxieties and abuse growing up, their own mental health issues, etc., and that can limit the depth of relationships they can achieve with you. Try to be patient, but don't drive yourself insane trying to achieve what isn't possible.
And if you feel like you don't belong, maybe you don't, and maybe that's okay. Maybe you're neurodivergent or simply have morals or interests that are incompatible with theirs. But the fact remains, there is someone who will accept you and with whom you can belong in peace, if you can open yourself up to let them. You haven't lost until the last time you give up on finding them. Giving up on something you still deeply care about, without eventually picking it back up again, is the only failure. It's okay to quit, but don't be afraid to come back to it if you care about it.
~ advice I try to accept myself, would give my younger self, and may hopefully be at least a little helpful for you
3it doesn’t matter what any singular person thinks about you.
This is only true in the sense that it's the masses who mindlessly believe what manipulators tell them that are the real threat. They become mindless, raging mobs who will slaughter whoever they're told to slaughter without hesitation or thought. That's the real problem. The average person can be led by the nose as if they were cattle by anyone amoral enough to mislead.
There are people out there who do their best to understand and accept you as you are, without using what they learned to make half-assed guesses about the rest of who you are.
No they don't. Stop lying to me.
They may be few and far between
Then by definition they are ineffective and therefore don't count. The only people who matter are those who can crush the angry mobs described above. A single person will be drawn and quartered by the above as soon as they are discovered.
I know they exist.
PROVE IT!!!
Drag their bodies before me!
I'm sick and tired of assholes like you asserting bullshit you can't prove. You have no right to simply assume shit you can't prove yourself. If you want me to believe your horseshit, then hunt these people down yourself, drag them to me via meathooks, and bodily prove their existence. I will never simply believe what anyone tells me simply because "they said so".
As soon as you start looking for those who accept you instead of trying to be accepted by those who don’t, you’ll be on a better course.
I've done that for FIFTY YEARS and found exactly NO ONE!!! This is why know you're a liar. You're just another asshole trying to pin the blame on me for your abusiveness, saying I haven't done enough to find people who don't exist.
And remember, parents, old friends, etc. who don’t necessarily get you too well aren’t necessarily trying to be cruel, but you may never have quite the relationship with them you wish you could.
My parents built a shed for the sole purpose of tying me to a chair and beating me with phonebooks to torture me. I don't "not have quite the relationship with them you wish you could" - you motherfuckers methodically torture me and try to destroy my free will because you all assert I'm a slave object to be commanded and obey you without question. Don't bullshit me with this "relationship" nonsense - you want me either obedient or dead; nothing else is acceptable to any of you. Quit pretending you're any less of a monster than you are.
And if you feel like you don’t belong, maybe you don’t, and maybe that’s okay.
How is it okay when you motherfuckers will do anything to kill the people who "don't belong?" If you bastards are willing to murder millions of people who "don't belong" in your genocides, it's clear than belonging is an absolute necessity for survival. Either I "belong" or everyone else is an existential threat.
You haven’t lost until the last time you give up on finding them.
Fuck you. I already gave up on every finding them - the fact that you assholes were willing to inflict PTSD on a child proved beyond a shadow of doubt how evil the human species was. It's literally impossible for humanity to be any good and yet allow children to have PTSD inflicted on them. Humanity has to make a choice - and it chose its own pleasure at the cost of child trauma. That choice forever damned it; the human species is irredeemable and will drive itself to extinction through making its children non-viable through trauma.
But I didn't "lose" - you motherfuckers failed me. You failed every child you let get abused. That blame does NOT fall on me - that falls on every person who abuses me, even if the form of abuse is neglect.
1
I wish I knew this before I wasted so much effort trying to build relationships with assholes.
1
Bitcoin, gme stock. Start buying now and don't stop until rich.
7Don't take life too seriously.
7Start a retirement plan now!
Also, watch out for that bottle of Jarritos...
6Your shyness is a choice, just start saying yes to things that scare you and it will get easier.
The moment I worked that out life got a lot better for me. I figured it out not too far past 18 but I wonder what relationship I would have with my hometown if I figured it out sooner.
6"You're not lazy or stupid, you have a rare, extreme case of MTHFR. Get on a high dose of methylfolate, and as soon as Cymbalta becomes available, get on that too.
Also, when you meet [name redacted], run. He's going to use you and spit you out "
6I'm 18 rn and I'd tell my younger self "take care of your teeth, you fcking moron"
6Nov 8, 2022: 10, 33, 41, 47, 56, 10
5This should be obvious, but don't listen to your dad's relationship advice.
5I know you're desperate. Do not get credit cards. You can hang on a few more years to be able to have nice things. The argument that you need to start building credit is rationalization. Your friends will love you even if you can't buy nice gifts. You're not smarter than every other delusional person who insists they can magically pay back more than they earn. Don't be stupid.
5Not a god damn thing, not that he'd listen.
5Don't go to university directly after school. Get an apprenticeship as a software developer or better yet, as a webdeveloper in a company that creates websites for customers.
Get a car! Be independent! This is the freedom you so desperately need. With a finished apprenticeship and a possibility to leave your old life behind... The rest will fall into place. Everywhere is better than staying in the pity puddle that is your hometown.
5Tertiary education is a scam and you should have listened to the people who tried to tell you this.
5I got a job I could have without, but now I have to stay employed because those loans are demanding
2
Don't go live with your dad.
Don't get on the motorcycle he buys you.
Find this specific woman your age in the USA, she's your soulmate.
This is a tablet computer. Saved on it is a thing called Wikipedia. You're gonna make a fuckton of money. Use it to plant trees ASAP because we're fucked otherwise.
5Books existed before, so how is Wikipedia an advantage? The tablet itself would be worth more than a website full of reposted knowledge randomly edited by strangers.
Also, is this soulmate aware of the situation, or is it a one-way obsession?
2
Go to the doctor and ask for medication. It’s not normal to cry for a month in deep depression and then not sleep for a month due to manic excitement. Keeping it a secret and sitting the dark wanting to cut yourself while your friends and family are unaware is stupid and selfish.
5Start lifting weights and eating more
5It doesn't get better.
4Big Macs are not a good source for sustenance. Yes, they are tasty, no just don't.
4Boo!
4Be gay, trim weed.
4https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/d3a9f136-4726-4e3e-9225-671e6ac7b495#mGIwHl7Y.copy
“And will you do me a favor? Will you lay off the fucking candy bars?” - Timecop
4That weird compulsion to always be in pursuit of a relationship might be gender dysphoria.
4Drop out of college to enter the workforce as you were not properly prepared for college and you still don't know what career you want. Don't join the military. Save up for a car.
4You have ADHD. If you don't do something about it, it will undermine you your whole life and you'll blame yourself.
Also, take up running. You're really good at it, and future you wishes she took it up when she was your age
3"Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur"
3Nothing you do for the next 10 years will really matter so just try to have fun and enjoy being young and without responsibilities.
3Crypto currency is not a flash in the pan. Buy Bitcoin!!!
3I would add "Sell at 60k" (I know it topped at over 68) and "Avoid MTGox!"
2
Trust your instinct that the uni course you've chosen isn't right for you.
3Don't drown in self pity
3- you're a worthless excuse for human being
- drop your college course rn, maths and physics are shit for nerds don't delve into it unless you really like it (you don't)
- get therapy (call your dad and lay out all the shit you that's been bugging you)
- after you have tried your best at p 3, get on psychotropic meds asap. figure it out on your own lol
- practice singing
2The dad one hit me. Did that yesterday and today he practically pretends it didn't happened. But yeah, I think this is a good advice for the youngesters, confront your parents if needed. I wish I didn't wait till 25 to do it. Hope you are okay now, or getting better, even if by a little day by day. AND PRACTICE YOUR SINGING
1
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2Be kind to yourself
2This is your last chance to admit your feelings before you drift apart and you never talk to her again.
Also, be nicer to grandma and spend more time with her, you have far less time than you've convinced yourself you have.
2I know what you're going through. Trust me it'll get worse. But afterwards it's good you didn't do it. It gets sooooo much better just a year or so after. You'll be happy just sit tight for a bitband do what you think is right.
2Take that job in Nigeria do a few years and you should be set. Don't overthink it.
2I'll tell you when I get there.
1You have OCD and are on the autism spectrum. Your mom is kind of narcissist, set strong boundaries with her. You're strong enough to live on your own. Don't stop educating yourself. You can handle graduate school.
1She'll come, just wait a little longer.
1Do NOT buy that speaker system.
1"Don't fucking do that, dumbass!"
1“You’re right!”
1Jump, do it
1"It's all just going to keep going."
1Kys
-1