Everyone Has Their Own Train

Dear Younger Me,

You will study hard and get good grades because you are supposed to. You will go to that prestigious university and graduate early but freak out because everyone else will seem to have it all figured out with their fancy jobs, fellowships and med/law school admissions and you will have no idea what you actually want to do with your life. You will share your anxiety with one of your favorite professors with the analogy that you feel like "everyone has tickets to the train that's leaving the station and you don't..." He will highly recommend graduate school and he will give you one of the best pieces of advice, "Everyone has their own train". You will take this to heart and have some mild reassurance that maybe everyone does have their own timeline to achieve whatever it is they're supposed to, be it dream job, perfect relationship, dream home, etc.

You will get a soul-sucking job at one of the top law firms in the country and realize that you never want to be a lawyer despite everyone telling you that you'd be a great one. You go back to that same professor for some more sage advice and you tell him that you miss using your brain so he excitedly encourages you to work in a lab and finally apply to graduate school.

You will work diligently in the lab, get published and get into another prestigious university for a graduate program but drop out with only a Master's degree because you were only doing what was expected of you and (not surprisingly) you are still unhappy. You will fall into a deep depression, sleep all day, drop 10 pounds and cut yourself off socially from everyone. Your parents will take you on a formative trip overseas and your dad will tell you that you're not going to eat the same thing twice the entire trip. You will reunite with family members, eat all sorts of crazy things and get exposed to a million different smells, tastes and textures and it is then and there that you will realize the next important life lesson, you need to start making decisions for yourself and figure out what makes you (and not your parents) happy.

You will cold e-mail a chef you had met at a benefit while you were a poor grad student who had assumed you worked in restaurants because you were so into food and he will suggest a culinary school that has a work-study program. You will work off the tuition washing dishes, assisting chef instructors, pulling ingredients for classes and sweeping floors. You will temp during the day and attend culinary school at night. You will learn exactly what it means to work 80-100 hours a week and that will prep you for restaurant hours. You will learn the true meaning of hard work. You will learn that it's the small kind gestures that matter the most and the girl who saved a milk crate for you to sit on at staff meal will become a lifelong friend.

You will graduate and move to the other coast the very next day to start an internship at the best restaurant in the city. You will work for free for months and take out loans on your credit card to pay your bills because you sure as hell aren't going to admit that you need money to anyone. You will later learn that credit card debt is rampant among line cooks and that it's really stupid not to accept financial help because not everyone is lucky enough to have people that can/want to help.

You will work in the nation's best restaurants, you will work for some of your heroes and those heroes will call you "fucking stupid", tell you that "you're embarrassing them" and that you "should pick another career". You will have you ass smacked with a towel "by accident", your boss will suggest you "go to Vegas with him and his buddies" and everyone will fuck with your money. Overtime will go missing, you'll get shift pay that amounts to less than minimum wage and in the most egregious example you will get your wages reduced as "punishment" for standing up for yourself. You will leave restaurants after deciding that jumping on top of dumpsters, getting verbally abused, robbed and seeing your boss take credit for your food is just not worth it anymore.

You will temporarily move in with your little brother and his then girlfriend, then temporarily move back home with your parents feeling like you're an utter failure and that every career decision has been wrong. You will have no money, no plan, no man. You will apply to every job under the sun while behind your back everyone is telling your parents you're a loser and that they wasted a ton of money on your education. Everyone will call you a spinster. You will watch all your high school and college classmates climb up their respective career ladders, get married, buy homes and you will have nothing. But you'll keep trudging along. 

You will learn the most important lesson that perseverance does pay off. You will work with some more people you have long admired and get some great press. You will do every single job you can with a culinary degree. You will achieve your lifelong dream of cooking in Europe. Eventually you'll even emerge victorious on TV, meet and be on a first name basis with many of the food writers you grew up reading and more.

You will be asked to speak on a hospitality panel at your college reunion. All the people that talked behind your back will want to say they know you for that impossible restaurant reservation. You will get fed like a king at all your friends' restaurants. You will come up with deliciousness for millions of people.

Through it all you will put your personal life on the back burner for the sake of your career. But occasionally, you will waste time with the wrong boys who resent your drive, your intelligence and your intensity. You will hit your 40's and decide it's finally time to focus on more serious dating. You will meet dozens of men and go on many, many dates. They will make you feel unattractive, unwanted and unloveable. You will start to feel like you are too old, your body isn't as tight as it once was and there are weird lines and wrinkles all over the place.

Right when you're about to throw in the towel you will meet a man who makes you feel like you're dealing with a man for the first time. You will realize that all of the other suitors were boys in men's bodies. He will look at you in such a way on your first date that you feel utterly beautiful. He will tell you he loves "strong women" and mean it. He will be the first guy you feel like you can truly be yourself with. He will pause and gaze adoringly at your body even though you wish you could lose a few more pounds and get back to the body you had in your 20's. He will see you, every bit of you and want to know everything about you. He will ask you about your best friends and you will tell him about the girl who saved the milk crate for you during work study, the girl who stalked you outside of the best restaurant in the city determined to be your friend when you were both interns, etc.

You will realize that your favorite professor was right all along. Everyone does have their own train.