How it Feels to be Teenage Me
An Essay
I am coming to the realization that everyone was once me: a confused teen in search of self identity with a bad haircut and a crazy group of friends. Wondering when exactly I will grow up but hoping it won't come too soon. Obsessing over models on instagram who seem to have it all put together and somehow assuming that this is a reality I have failed to achieve. I am coming to the realization that everyone is told “be good at everything” as if that is some sort of reasonable expectation. We put our self images in picture frames that we know won’t fit and we figure that instead of getting a new picture frame, we should do our very best to change the picture. I am placed in this category, stuck in a limbo between child and adult, and labeled “teen”. I wear this label, which feels to me as an oxymoron, and walk the delicate tightrope between the responsibilities I am given and the privileges I crave.
Teens, we scramble to figure out where we want to go to college and what we want to do with our lives because every time someone asks us these questions, it feels as though we are being pushed one step closer to the future that we secretly fear. We think that maybe if we can just give an honest answer to these questions, we might begin to understand ourselves. At the same time, we hurry to have sex and do drugs because it will validate that we are real people who make our very own adult choices and yet we are unsure about our loss of innocence, secretly clinging to what’s left of our childhood. I know I am not the only one who can’t get rid of my old t-shirt that is way too small because it's soaked in memories of when stress wasn’t a concept. The stress is caused by school and by our constant search for identity. We do our best to be honest and be true to ourselves but we go home at the end of the day evaluating how well we managed to mask our imperfections. We want to be hot and edgy and have people do double takes when we walk by and yet we find ourselves craving the shelter that conformity provides. So, we put our earbuds in when we walk from class to class and we buy the same pair of white converse as every other white girl. We want to be seen as smart but we fear being the know-it-all. We want to say we’ve done it, but we still want something to look forward to. And when the world decides to hand us this basket of paradoxes, we are too busy doing our homework to sort through them and understand our place in things.
We grow and change far more quickly than we anticipate and time seems to speed up exponentially, every year passing just a little bit faster than the year before. We make a facebook and change the profile photo every few months and are stunned when we scroll through our past ones as if we don’t recognize the people we used to be. When we get glimpses of these people, we shudder knowing that while we have changed in size and appearance we still want to be held in our mother’s arms and rocked to sleep some nights. It scares us that someday we might cringe at who we are now and we work relentlessly to prevent regret as if that is our one responsibility. I am coming to the realization that when we say “growing up is hard”, people far more experienced than us respond with “existing is hard”, affirming that this confusion will never end. We won’t wake up one morning fully pleased with who we have become, but we should still try to get there.
I have come to the realization that we don’t know how to express the things we don’t understand or the thoughts that consume us at night so we figure it's best not to try unless we can fit it into a tweet. Maybe this is because everytime we do try, our teacher hands it back covered in red marks correcting our spelling as if that is what matters. When these people who are supposed to guide us decide to read for our words instead of our letters, they sometimes have the audacity to tell us that how we feel is wrong. The “grown ups” never ask us how we feel; instead, they hand us a multiple choice question asking us to identify how we think we should feel. As a result we’re too hard on ourselves because we know that's how the world is.
I am coming to the realization that even though I may not say it, when I make eye contact with a stranger in the halls on my way to third period, we have achieved some level of understanding by simply being here and now. The challenges we face are dished out to all of us one way or another and we’re all pulling our hair out trying to make sense of these contradictions. I’m fifteen years old and I’m a member of a beautiful army of lost souls.
