I don’t really know what I expected. As a child we tend to believe that teenagers are these lanky, scary creatures that trudge around with their hoods pulled up and carry guns in their pockets. Surely it’s just hormones, the sour glares and sharp grey eyes that seemed to look straight through you as you skipped home from school with a backpack slung over your shoulder. While the other part of me believed that they were these amazing, daring people who didn’t let the world trample all over them. They would sneak out of their bedroom windows to fill the night with colour, loud music and police sirens all while wearing studded heels and scarlet lipstick.
I had no clue that being a teenager would be this messed up.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am mentally and emotionally fucked. Maybe the reason that so many teenagers never smiled was because they couldn’t, we’re like wild animals in a circus. Forced into an environment with hundreds of others, all of a different species whilst being forced to perform the same mind numbing routines surrounded by people that we can’t stand. The teenage mind is an anomaly and should be treated like an active bomb, from the ages of thirteen to nineteen every single word or experience is carved into your bones and runs in the blood in your veins. It shapes you as a person and is said to be the best days of your life, along with the worst. Surely in fifteen years you’ll laugh about the time that you crashed dad’s car into the river, or the time that you got stoned and stole a traffic light from the highway just so that you could keep it as a souvenir. You’ll remember the time you broke up with your first love and sobbed your heart out in the front seat of your car, it was 2 in the morning and you listened to Greenday until you cried yourself to sleep against the steering wheel. You’ll remember the day you met Matt from The 1975 but had to wear sunglasses because you got into a fight the night before and your eyes were bruised and your face was grazed, he signed your shirt and you nearly forgot your own name.
You’ll remember his name, and you’ll remember the way he tasted like a fresh cup of coffee. You’ll think about how his skin was warm and smooth against your own or about how he liked to see you in his sweater and underwear on a Sunday morning, his lips will leave the ghost of kisses on your collar bone and jaw but you’ll do your best to forget them. You’ll think that you’re over him and his husky laugh, you’ll forget about his dimpled smile and light green eyes until one day when you’re all alone it will come back. Images of him playing with your hair as you slept on his shoulder in the car will flood back and you’ll break down in tears in the middle of the night with the mixtape he made you hugged against your chest. It might take months but you’ll finally get over him, after you destroy everything that even remotely reminds you of him.
Not to mention the way you’re treated. Adults will treat you like a child; children will treat you like an adult all while you’re expected to complete exam after exam. The exams that will determine what you do with your life, where you work, where you live and how you survive. They won’t trust you with sleeping over a boy’s house but they will expect you to tell them exactly who you want to be and where you will work when you barely know yourself who you are.
To me life is just a blur of rainy days, cigarettes and Yorkshire tea. One day we won’t be able to say that we are teenagers; I won’t be able to skateboard through the mall with my best friend laughing in front of me. I won’t be able to dye my hair a million diffrent colors or pierce my lip and it will take a little longer to get out of bed in the morning. I’ll have to forget the band T-shirts and black skinny jeans, slowly the countless amounts of bracelets around my wrists will reduce to a single silver wedding band and I’ll swap the worn out vans for a pair dress shoes. Maybe I’ll have a daughter and name her Alice after Alice in Wonderland, I always loved Disney films but Alice would be my excuse to keep watching them. I’ll leave high school, along with the crowded halls and graffiti scattered desks. The thing about growing up is that we forget, even though those six years are filled with endless amounts of emotional bullshit and failed friendships, we mustn’t forget about the good. No matter what they tell you, don’t let them stop you from buying a milkshake instead of iced coffee or sleeping with a stuffed bear. We must never forget that age is only a number, and that we never really grow up.
