When I say being a teenager is one of the hardest experiences of your life, maybe not everyone will relate to me. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks that dealing with problems at the young age of 13 is one of the worst things to put a person through. The years of teen life are tough ones, things like school, young love or friendships, and dare I say it, puberty, make these years a very confusing time.

Junior high could very well be compared to prison for some of its everyday occupants. The worry of what peers think of you when you walk down the hallway and if you’re following the right trends at the right times, probably emits more stress than all the work we get. That is actually an excellent segway into our first topic, trends. Trends will always be a big thing in school, but nowadays the trends seem to change once a week. By the time you’ve set up an outfit for the rolled jeans and Vans trend, the new thing is tight shirts. Not to mention all the different trends that exist, you never know if you’re following the right ones or if that’s considered to be VSCO and nobody wants to wear it.

Yet another segway into the next topic, judgemental people and ‘bullying’. I mentioned VSCO above, some of you may not know what I’m talking about or you do and you have no idea why I’m bringing it up. Remember at the beginning of this year when we couldn’t get enough of making jokes about the VSCO girl trend? Remember how we would automatically call someone a VSCO girl for simply liking a color or a shirt? I remember, and in reality, it was very wrong. We were judging a group of people just for the things they liked, we didn’t even take the time to get to know these people, we just automatically assumed that because they had a shell necklace and a baggy shirt they were all the same and not worth our time. This kind of thing is happening all the time and it’s just not fair, people shouldn’t feel the need to change them and the things they like just because you don’t like them and you told them it was weird.

Let’s add another ingredient to this cake of being a teen: Young relationships, and not even just romantic ones but also friendships. You’d think we’d be better at friendship since it is something that’s been shoved in our faces since we could go to school, but walk into Dobie any day and you’ll see that a lot of us forgot how to be a good friend or something. One day you’re friends with her and then the next it’s like you’ve never met her in your whole 13 years of life. Some take a more dramatic approach with the arguing and fighting in a friendship and things get physical. When you reach 13 you’re no longer considered a kid but you’re also so far away from being an adult. This is such an awkward transition and we don’t know how to solve all these new problems that are being thrown at us. That is exactly why young love almost never works out for more than a week. The lucky ones last for a month to four. Even when the relationship seems to be working out great, something goes wrong because of how young and naive you are. I can tell you this from experience, I recently broke it off with my boyfriend of almost a year and a half. The thing is, people change, they lose feelings, yall are young, you have to look at it as a trial and error. You don’t need a partner to be happy, just do you and enjoy your youth. I am in no way trying to discourage trying out dating but definitely don’t make it your first priority.
Lastly the topic you were probably dreading me bringing up, puberty. The only thing I’m really going to talk about with this is the fact that we have to realize that it’s an awkward and confusing situation and it’s not something you should add to the list of judging.

Every day I deal with the constant struggle of acne. I never used to have it but then all of a sudden it was something people were talking about behind my back. Comments like “just wash your face” don’t make a situation like mine any better. If you are in the same kind of situation I’m in you know that sometimes just washing your face doesn’t work. I’ve feel like I’ve tried every kind of soap out there and I still go to school with these “strange deformities” on my face. So to people who judge others on things they really can’t control, try to put yourself in their shoes. And to people who deal with things they really can’t control, don’t let it define you.

I like to think of myself as an average 13 year old. I’m not rich or famous, and I go to a public school. I deal with everyday 13 year old problems and I’m honestly just trying to get by in my little world. I can’t say that my experience is bad because that would be a bit of an exaggeration. I also can’t say that it’s been all good, I’ve been through the ups and downs of teenhood. I tried out dating, I’ve had lots of friendships that didn’t work out and I’ve also made some amazing friends. I’m trying to figure out who I am just like everyone else. Sometimes I feel like just breaking down and crying, sometimes I feel lonely, but even when I feel like I’m going through it all I just have to breathe and remember that everything will be alright. So while we are so young, let’s take advantage of it and just enjoy it. Stop worrying what people think at school, wear what we ourselves like instead of worrying about the trends, be a good person to everybody no matter if they’re our friends or not, and ignore the bad things we can’t control instead of pointing them out.