Neha Prakash - Letter to Riley

(Letter to Riley from Inside Out)a

Dearest Riley,

I understand that things in life may not always work out, and trust me, even I have had my own hard times. Sometimes it’s best to really think and feel before taking any actions, just to take a little moment to process our thoughts.

Running away from home was a serious matter, and it isn’t something you could do easily within a few minutes. I understand that you must have been feeling desperate to go back to Minnesota, where everything seemed to be right, where your friends and family really thrived. To be honest, it’s okay to feel that way, really. However, it is still best to think about it and process your emotions. Think about whether you would do this if you weren’t sad or angry. In that moment alone you wanted to run away, but before that, when you were happier, you may have not wanted to run away. We often get so caught up in the tornado of our emotions that we often don’t realize the consequences of our actions.

What if you really had gone onto the freeway in the bus? You could not stop in the middle, nor could you easily find your way back. That can lead to a huge bout of regret, another thing we may want to avoid.

So I’d recommend finding a hobby that makes you reflect on your emotions, and in general, your life. For example, since you like ice-skating and hockey, maybe you can practice alone while thinking about the matters in your head, and that can lead to a surreal world of thoughts in which you are able to express and accept how you feel, whether you want to move out of that feeling, and think about actions you can take to make you feel better. You can journal anytime, and reflect everyday about any topic, and it doesn’t have to involve negative emotions; maybe you loved the party you had with your friends the day before and now you feel so happy that it turned out great, and you want to spend some time skating to celebrate!

Moving was hard for me, too. When I found out I was going to move from our tiny apartment in Woodland Hills to a weird city called Santa Clarita (was it named after a saint is a question that I still have now), I didn’t like that idea. It was during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was making friends with my classmates through Zoom and Google Hangouts, and when I was starting to adapt to middle school life, I had to go all the way to a new school where sixth grade was still elementary school and seventh grade was junior high? That sounded silly to me, and I was just beginning to make a new life for myself, and now it was about to shatter. Instead of being happy about moving, I was entirely upset. I would not talk to my parents (I was around your age, eleven before twelve when this happened) for a couple of days, and I constantly doubted myself and the new environment that I was forcefully about to be plunged into.

Back then I was a frenzy of a diarist, so I liked to journal all of my frustrations into a composition notebook, and after that I realized that I felt calmer. I realized that I knew some people who had moved from our apartment to there, so I wasn’t completely alone. And COVID-19 was a period of confusion during online learning, so it was a great opportunity for me to just sneak in like I had been there the whole time and just start building my way up to start a new life. And now as a student at AOC with a lot of friends, that turned out to be successful! So, think about the long term benefits and the endless possibilities that your life could have instead of focusing on these little doubts. You got this!

With regards and best of luck,
Neha Prakash