Dear Robyn, you will not be on the Johnny Carson show, but it will still be okay

A letter to my teenage self

The bad news first. You will never be on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. You’ll never be that famous and then he’ll die. This also means you’ll never get to sit on the couch next to Jimmy Stewart while he recites one of his dog poems. Or Cary Grant, for that matter. Or Katherine Hepburn. What can I say? I clearly let you down, Teenage Robyn.

You will also not marry Harrison Ford, which by the way, would have been gross. He was already old when you liked him. Certainly old enough to be your dad. You also will not marry your first crush or the boy next door or any number of those guys you flirted with when you were sixteen at that summer camp for smart, nerdy kids in Frankfort, Kentucky.

The good news. You will be single for a very long time, which, if you remember, Teenage Robyn, you always thought would be kind of cool, like Karen Allen’s character in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Princess Leia, only so much less uptight than her. I mean, Jesus, Leia, get a sense of humor.

You will enjoy all those years being single, even while you feel a little bit like a freak for it, but that’s just because that’s the way society makes women who are single for a long time feel. You will travel to England all by yourself. You will live in several apartments and houses alone and, really, you will find you like having all that room to yourself.

In one apartment, you will paint your bedroom a bright, bright yellow which will make your mother cringe, but what do you care, because it’s your bedroom. Yours, yours, yours. In that same apartment, you’ll cut your thumb open making guacamole (which will also be yours, yours, yours) and it will bleed and bleed and because you don’t know anyone in the city where you’ve just moved, you’ll be a little afraid that you’re going to die in that apartment alone. You won’t, but this will not be the first or last time you’ll be afraid of dying alone.

Me looking sporty, though I was not at all sporty

You will, in some ways, make your life as difficult as you possibly can, like your disposition will simply not allow you to stop at the assigned homework, but add on all the extra credit even though, Teenage Robyn, you do not need that extra credit. At least, this is what your first therapist will tell you—that you seem to do things the hard way. Yes, you’ll have more than one therapist. Bet you didn’t see that coming, Teenage Robyn! And also, thank god, you will have more than one therapist.

You’ll be single until your mid-thirties, having lived alone for almost a decade and then you’ll fall in love with a married man, even if he turns out to be a married man about to get divorced, though you won’t know that. He’ll also have a small child and his (soon-to-be) ex-wife will be your friend, who you’ve recently returned from a two-week trip to India with. Yes, you go to India! Yes, also, you go from being single and living alone to married with a child over the course of like, six months! I’m not going to lie to you, Teenage Robyn. Those are some hard months.

Your husband, though he is not Harrison Ford, will in fact be the person who finally teaches you that love is not about giving up freedom, but gaining it. Love is sort of like home base in tag—a safe place that allows you to roam farther than you ever thought you could. This is a good thing to figure out and something many people never get to learn. Also, in raising a child, you’ll get to work through all your childhood shit. Teenage Robyn, yes, you have some serious childhood shit, I am sorry to inform you.

You will become a writer, though much later than you would have liked. You’ll publish five books (and still counting). You will get to walk into bookstores in places far away from where you live and see your book on the shelf. This will never get old. That it took a little longer to be published will feel like a blessing. I mean, the stuff you wrote when you were sixteen was interesting in its way, but turns out that if you do it right, you actually learn some things from living that makes your writing better.

You will not give birth, but you will help to raise a daughter who your husband says has your sense of humor and your mastery of sarcasm. She will amaze you, but you will also realize that most of the things that are amazing about her don’t have much to do with you. You’ll figure out that most of parenting is just getting the fuck out of the way.

You’ll end up living in a place that you never, ever, ever would have picked for yourself, Teenage Robyn. Another small town! Just an hour away from the small town where you grew up! I know! What the fuck? But the place will make you so incredibly happy that sometimes you want to walk down the streets and burst into song. I know, it’s so goofy, but it’s true. Also, the river will still be there and you’ll be able to see Kentucky from your bathroom, because Kentucky will always be home.

Sorry, you’ll never live in a big city, unless Birmingham, Alabama, counts. You will come to love the South, deeply, and to tolerate the Midwest. That feeling you have of never fitting in will go away because you’ll find your people. Your people, it turns out, are everywhere and your people are awesome. You will continue to rely on the affection of cats to get by on a day-to-day basis.

Because you loved Gone with the Wind and A Tale of Two Cities, you think you’d like to live through some big historical events. You think that would be kind of exciting. Teenage Robyn, you are wrong. You will live through a global pandemic and then what might be the collapse of American democracy (fingers crossed!). Exciting is not the word you will use to describe either of these historical events. But you will survive them (fingers crossed!).

Your life will not turn out at all as you expected it to, Teenage Robyn. I have to admit that I’m not at all sorry about that. You’ll have some real sorrow and that sadness you didn’t have a name for (it’s depression, sweetie) will never go away, but you’ll get better at living with it. You will also have incredible joy. You will feel so loved, even though you were not at all prepared by your upbringing to feel that way.

Your life will be so different and yet so amazing. It will be good in so many ways you could not imagine when you were sixteen. Even without Johnny Carson. I promise.