Dear 26 Year-Old Me,

Dear 26 year-old Lizbeth,

Hey how are you doing? Hopefully you are having a better time than you were 10 years ago. I wanted to talk to you about a few small things that hopefully you haven’t forgotten about. 

Let's see where we should start. Well, as you remember there is a pandemic going on with a virus called the Coronavirus. Of course, who could forget--and everything is closed. When I say everything I literally mean it; all different types of public places like stores, schools, restaurants, and even places like the DMV.

Let’s just focus on you right now and not about the pandemic which is what half of 2020 was spent talking about or at least up to right now when I’m writing this. Junior year is coming up, and you will finally start your path on working towards entering the medical field. You have decided to take a few classes to help you with this journey--AP biology and Human Anatomy--which lets you see if this is what you truly want to be because up to now, you haven’t changed your mind to anything else. I know everyone says that AP Biology is one of the hardest classes you can take at Leyden, but I believe in you and hope that you did great in these classes. Hopefully classes like this helped you out and now you have become a nurse. If you have, where do you work at and how is it going? I would be surprised if you weren’t a nurse because your sophomore year this is what you had chosen as a career that you 100% wanted to follow. If you changed your mind wow I can’t believe you did that. I really can’t think what else you would have chosen. Either way, whatever  you decide on I know you chose a career that you would enjoy.

Also, I hope you remember that your sophomore year you finally were able to get braces. Now I don’t know if you remember, but this was a very big deal for you back then. You had wanted to have braces since you were in 5th grade, and now you finally had them. As of right now, you don’t have that small gap that used to bother you so much in your two front teeth and your teeth are getting better. Fun fact as you wrote this letter you were wearing your rubber bands. Ahh yes those things you remember what a pain in the butt they were to have to wear every night.  I sure bet they were worth it because you probably have an amazing smile now. 

I really hope you are just living your life to the fullest and enjoying everything that you have because 10 years ago when you were in quarantine you were really not having a great time. It made you realize how you took the smallest things for granted and never truly appreciated all the freedom that you had. I could go on forever talking about many other things and, of course, writing a hundred questions for you to answer when you read this but this would just be too long for you and your english teacher to read. Yes hopefully you remember Ms. Ellis, your sophomore English teacher, who loved to tell jokes and made that double period class not be as boring. Take care of 26-year-old Lizbeth, and tell everyone that is currently in her life now that I appreciate everything that they have done for her, especially Mom and Dad.

                                                     Yours truly,  

16 year-old Lizbeth Quintana