To my teenager self

In your teenage years life is about a boy who doesn’t see life the same way you do. So your heart aches, you cry and listen to sad songs. You also read stories about the perfect love on Tumbler and wish it could be like that with him.

In your teenage years life is also about going out with friends, laughing at not so funny things all the time. Life is a bliss but you don’t see it the same way I do. To you life is sometimes dreadful, and disappointing because your heartbreaks multiple times. Either because your family doesn’t understand you or you feel trapped by your parents authority over you or school is hard and it seems like it’ll never end…

But then one random day you wake up and you have no idea where time’s gone, how it all happened so fast, how life changed so quick you weren’t even able to process what was happening while it was happening.

One day you’re not a teenager anymore, one day you’re exactly where the old you couldn’t way to get to. And when you’re there you realise you still feel so many of the things you felt as a teenager, life is still messy and hard. You don’t have it all figured out and that’s the complete opposite of what you used to think would happen. If anything life has become a whole lot more complicated, more tiresome, draining and heavy.

One day you’re in a car laughing the whole time with your friends and then you blink, you’re a young adult and you realise you haven’t had a cheap laugh in so long. You realise although sometimes painful being a child was colourful and the world was way too small for you, your friends and your dreams.

And then you grow up and you realise the world is actually immense and that is terrifying to you. Because you’re now sailing your own boat, you’re captain now of this little, tiny boat. No longer in mom and dad’s yatch. So now when you think about the future, you don’t long it, instead your head is filled with concerns because what if your boat has a hole? What if you hit a rock? What if there’s a storm or a tsunami and you get thrown off your boat, or drown? What then? Who, then? And where are you sailing to? What are you going to eat for dinner? And lunch? AND breakfast? How long do you have to sail for?

But you still sail, even in doubt. In uncertainty. You keep going because that’s what everyone else is doing. And one random day, at a random time while sailing a thought pops up in your head: «Can I really sail a boat?»

I’m the young adult you. It didn’t get better. It just got a lot more lonely, grey and worrisome but it’s not all bad. You got some of the things you wanted and I am really proud of you, of us but sometimes I wish I was still you. Enjoy it while you can. Honestly, there’s no rush. You’re happy, you just don’t know it. Yet.