A TikToker and college student made viewers nostalgic after reading a letter she wrote at age 13 to her future self, brimming with hope

• At age 13, Michelle Skidelsky wrote a letter to her future self, which she read aloud to viewers on TikTok.
• She mused about her future career and ambitions, and shared words of encouragement.
• It's gone viral, as commenters are feeling nostalgic about Skidelsky's emotional look back to being a teen.

When she was 13, the Canadian TikToker Michelle Skidelsky wrote a letter to her future self, brimming with curiosity and hope. At 20, she decided to read it aloud to millions of strangers. Commenters are impressed with how much "self-love" she showed, and are getting wistful thinking about the past. 

On Tuesday, Sidelsky shared a TikTok of herself reading the letter she serendipitously received last week. Her video has gone viral with 2.7 million views. (As a teen, she used a website called FutureMe.org ,which enables users to pre-schedule emails. She provided Insider with a copy of the letter which was composed on March 22, 2016.)

"Just so you know," she narrated the letter. "I picked a random date to send this letter to. I may be 80 and never see it, or I will see it tomorrow."

Skidelsky started by expressing some curiosity about her career: "Do you still want to be a doctor like I do? A psychiatrist?" (Today, Skidelsky is a communications major, she said, quipping that her adolescent self "knew deep down that we weren't good at math.")

There was also some fear about the future: "If your life has gone horribly wrong, I'm sorry," she wrote to herself. "But your life was awesome at one point and don't regret making your life horrible because at one point it was everything you wanted."

Mostly, though, there were sweet words of encouragement: "I hope you remember that you are beautiful and awesome. I am proud of you, because I know we are capable of great things. You are smart, or you were, and you can be smart again."

Commenters were touched. "The way I would never say something this kind to myself when I was 13," one person wrote. "I love this a lot."

At the end of the letter, Skidelsky urged her future self to buy a donut – a request she later clarified was rooted in some pain, given that she was "battling a raging eating disorder at the time." In a follow-up video, Skidelsky enjoyed a vanilla donut, basking in the permission she'd been given to treat herself. 

All in all, Skidelsky said her younger self would be "pretty happy" with how her life has turned out so far – particularly with her 130,000 TikTok followers.  

And she brought the story full circle by writing a letter back to her adolescent self, whom she called "my hero."

In a TikTok carousel, Skidelsky reminisced about working at a Russian daycare on weekends, playing the flute, having an unrequited crush on her best friend, and always choosing navy blue elastics for her braces at the dentist.

The unique exchange has made people extremely emotional.

"I wish I could give 13 year old me the biggest hug," a commenter wrote.

"She didn't fully understand that she'd actually been dealt quite a tough hand in life," Skidelsky concluded. "Things turned out better than she ever could have imagined."