I hated being a sixteen year old girl.
I don’t know what it’s like for guys– just as bad, maybe, but men just don’t talk about this stuff much as women do. But being female and being a teenager– anywhere between the ages of about thirteen and seventeen, really– it’s horrible and difficult and painful.
Or at least, it was for me. And for a lot of other chicks I know as well.. Those who are teenagers now, and those who have been teenagers in the past. It’s a time of being awkward, of not quite fitting in anywhere, of being insecure and sometimes pretentious and all the while a little out of touch with reality, because that’s just how your brain is wired at that age. (Really.)
Being a teenager in the modern, material world is difficult at the best of times. Add anything that makes you different or even slightly undesirable, and ’difficult’ becomes ’virtual social torture.’
You can be too thin, too fat, too smart, too dumb, too poor,too rich, too boring, talk too much. You have to watch what you say and who you say it to. It a hormonal scramble combined with social chest beating sessions and it’s enough to test anyone’s sanity.
Friends are so important when you’re that age. Your family literally becomes something you take or granted for a small percentage of the time and actively resent the rest of the time. Your friends are your family… The love and understand you more than blood relations do anyway.
I hated myself as a kid. I thought I was excessively ugly, boring and plain. I was bullied and I was unpopular and I remember a stretch of months where I cried every night, begging my mum not to send me to school the next day, please don’t make me go… It’s difficult to see a life beyond high school when you’re in the thick of it. Life after school– as a grown up– it’s all one big confusing daydream where you may fail, or may succeed… And somehow that is directly tied in with your high school career. Although no one can explain that to you as an exact science.
Added to all the usual crap that teens have to deal with, now there’s the internet to really screw things over. The FaceBook feeds of young people are terrifying. At least when I was a kid, I could go home and shut it out and escape it- kids today don’t even really get that option because it follows them home. On their phones, their computers, their online social networks. If you are not on FaceBook you my as well not exist, and I understand that. But it also leaves you with few options as far as taking a break from the constant social parade that is being a teenager. And that sucks.
I’m not even sure why I’m writing this post. But it’s for someone I consider a mate of mine, someone I love very much. It’s hard now, I know that, and it probably sucks way more than I actually remember… But it passes. It feels like forever, like the most important chapter in your life… But it’s not. A few years from now you’ll look back had realize that what I’m saying is truth– being a teenage girl totally sucks arse, but it doesn’t last forever.
It passes. The best I can do is promise you that if nothing else… In time, this will all be insignificant. Everything– everything– passes eventually. And being is a teenager, feeling this way… that passes too.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
16 and 17 were some of the best years of my teenage life. I finally had friends… after 2.5 years at an all girls school, meeting some new people (and yes, boys were included) made all the difference. I lost weight, had people to hang out and have fun with, life couldn't have been better
But I know it's not like that for everyone.
This post struck a chord! Sixteen huh? Like just about everyone else who has commented i just wanted it to end and instead, it seemed like the year that dragged on forever! And no being ostracised, finding nowhere to fit in, isn't just confined to teenage girls.
I'm hoping that my teenage boys take how they were raised out into the world with them (i think the only people they bully is their parents
For what it's worth, I always found comfort in these words when I was younger:
For My Young Friends Who are Afraid
There is a country to cross you will find
in the corner of your eye,
in the quick slip of your foot-
-air far down,
a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you,
for me,
a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being afraid.
That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed.
What you fear will not go away:
it will take you into yourself
and bless you and keep you.
That’s the world,
and we all live there.
– William Stafford
I was also bullied really badly at my girls school in Melbourne. I still carry the emotional scars and have very low confidence as a result. This means that is easy to pick on me and people still do. I hope Karma hits those people really hard one day. I feel sorry for anyone who has been bullied and I hate all bullies. It is hard enough to grow up without having your rights to happiness trampled all over by selfish and mean people.
Paragraphs make reading what u have to say so much easier! Try it next time
I currently have a 16 year old son and I think it's just as bad for boys these days as it is for girls. There is also a lot of pressure on the way they look and of course…, they must be on face book.
Nicky Singh.
Yuch. Hated that time in my life. The cliques, the insecurity. Wouldn't want to live that again. It's even harder now, like you said, with the internet putting everything in your face. It brings the drama of school home so there's no escape. And drugs are so much easier to get now too. It's a tough time to be a teen-age girl.
It's true! I live in the U.S. and there have been several teenage suicides directly related to social media bullying. It's becoming a major issue here and the last one I heard about was only 10 years old! I know the media doesn't report on suicide in Australia, but I would be surprised if this isn't happening everywhere!
Gawd my teenage years sucked! Now i regret letting all my fear and anxieties paralyse me, but back then the easiest thing was to hide in my room and write really emo poetry!
If it were possible to go back to my teenage years I wouldn't do it for a million bucks! The whole time I lived through my teenage hell I had older people telling me to make the most of it because those would be the best years of my life. My arse they were! Being a teenager was awful for me.
ugh the teenage years…if only I could have a re-do but with the knowledge I have now!!!
16 sucked ass. I was too boy crazy for my own goddamn good. If only I had listened to my Mum and focused on school? Siiiigh!
I would never want to be 16 again…especially with all the media and electronics. But on the other hand, with a 14 yr. old daughter, sometimes texting and FB is the best way to communicate! Miss Pink, I was just like you…and realized that even as an adult, there are many women out there that still act like they are in high school. I think we are the ones that grew up!
I'm sad that there are so many women who have sad and terrible memories of being 16.
I was a really happy teenager, had lots of friends, worked part time and went to things like Homebake and local band competitions, I loved school and was devastated at the end of year 10 when alot of friends left to pursue jobs or change schools (to pursue performing arts). I loved the classes I chose to do and have a lot of memories. I never dumbed myself down at fear of being a 'nerd' I was in top classes and loved learning. I didn't care about weight or being pretty, but I was interested in my "grunge" look hehehehe. Luckily for me I wasn't bullied and I was also never a bully either. I remember sticking up for other girls on occasions when they were being bullied but then I would go on my merry way. It so saddens me to think that so many have sad memories of this age when I often dream about going back to this time. I guess I was lucky?
Either sad or happy memories it does pass and it does pass quickly! Before you know it school has finished and the reality hits that you are an adult and some of the things that used to matter don't matter anymore. There's no point trying to be in with the cool kids… its fake and pretentious. The best thing you can do is be you cause what makes you so special is that you, are you!
Being a teenage girl does SUCK.
I actually see a lot of my teenage years mimicing how life is for me now. The insecurity, it doesn't just go, but you get better at handling it, and not worrying where it doesn't matter.
In high school I was the observer, with pizazz and a very loud presence. I was different, and I actually prided myself on it and got quite annoyed when people would copy my style or mannerisms.
Now I am still the observer, I still have pizazz but it's hidden down in me as I happily make friends with the corner and watch quietly. I don't get so upset when people mimic me anymore, sometimes it is annoying but I see it as a compliment, just don't try to say I copied you because I will tell you to fuck off.
Ask anyone who has made it throug the teenage years and they will tell you they wish they did better at school. It's the best advice I can give a teenager. When it's hard, just switch off the social thing. Most the people you meet in high school are fuckwits and you won't need their friendship to have a future.
I stopped caring halfway through high school about making friends and that's when I found that people started to want to befriend me. I just wish when I stopped caring I also put more effort into my school work. That follows you through life FOREVER. Friends will come and go.
I used to make myself sick, literally, to avoid going to school – I would wish on a fever and voila! Next morning, too unwell to go. Back in those days you didn't 'give your kids what they want' (good lord, what's the world coming to, when someone tries to communicate their needs??), so I never did get pulled out of that damaging time to go the school I thought would be a better bet, even for a little while. Back in those days parents didn't see my reactions as an indication of something going on that needed addressing, beyond talking to teachers to no avail. Being 16 and with no power over your own destiny sucks a lot. I'm grateful, eternally, that there was no Facebook. It was bad enough with school ground taunting, and shopping centre taunting. It was easier for me to understand the actions of a 16yo neighbour who went into a suicide pact with her friend, a few years ago, because had I not had a separate social outlet (very much before social networking online and mobile phones), it could have been me. So, a few of us are here to say "It gets better", "Life is YOURS when you finish school", "Those kids won't be in your life in a few years' time". Thanks for the reminder, Lori – in a good way, because I've come a long way from the desolation of teenager-hood!
I used to make myself sick, literally, to avoid going to school – I would wish on a fever and voila! Next morning, too unwell to go. Back in those days you didn't 'give your kids what they want' (good lord, what's the world coming to, when someone tries to communicate their needs??), so I never did get pulled out of that damaging time to go the school I thought would be a better bet, even for a little while. Back in those days parents didn't see my reactions as an indication of something going on that needed addressing, beyond talking to teachers to no avail. Being 16 and with no power over your own destiny sucks a lot. I'm grateful, eternally, that there was no Facebook. It was bad enough with school ground taunting, and shopping centre taunting. It was easier for me to understand the actions of a 16yo neighbour who went into a suicide pact with her friend, a few years ago, because had I not had a separate social outlet (very much before social networking online and mobile phones), it could have been me. So, a few of us are here to say "It gets better", "Life is YOURS when you finish school", "Those kids won't be in your life in a few years' time". Thanks for the reminder, Lori – in a good way, because I've come a long way from the desolation of teenager-hood!
I remember reading Judy Blume books when I was younger (who didn't? The library book would fall open at the sex scene in Forever and I remember a photocopy of the pages being passed round!!) and marvelling at how she nailed my teenage brain. there was a blurb in the front of the books about her remember exactly what it was like to be a teenager, and I swore I would keep a diary of those times to remind myself of where I had been (I did, my brother found it and read it, so I destroyed them. Wish there had been passwordprotected files and laptop back then!).
But yeah, ole Blumey had her finger on the pulse, recognised and remembered the shitey hormonalsocialmaelstrom that makes absolutely no sense, and of course, with a few years maturity, and of course, that bloody hindsight, can put it all in context when no apparent context is seen back then.
I'm rambling, but I love this post. I recall the strains of wanting to do my own things without parents getting in the way, telling me what I could and couldn't do, controlling me – I remember that straining at the leash at 16 even though up until that point I had been a 'good girl'.
And its all relevant – all the patterns and thinking can crop up again years later, just the frontal lobe is a bit more developed and able to deal better. Sometimes!
Wow, I could have written the exact same thing. I wish somebody had told me that highschool ISN'T the best time of your life, it is horrible and terrible and it gets better.
Thanks for writing this.
I agree about facebook. I am SO glad that it wasn't around when I was 16. I can't even fathom how much more chaos it could've created in my life.
Fortunately, my little sisters (16 & 12) don't have fb accounts and don't want one, right now.
T H A N K Y O U!!
I have tried saying as much to my 16 year old, but my own attempts at making this point seem to escape her… (What does mum know, right?)
I'm going to show her this post. Heck, I'm gonna print it out and stick it to her door!
THANK YOU
It is true. It will pass and sometimes that is all I can offer. Sometimes the knowledge that it would be over someday was all that got me through another day of the years between 11 and 18.
Just last week a fellow 30-something and I wondered, too, what we would have done if school had the ability to follow us home via technology; and heaven knows I've made my share of impulsive and potentially embarrassing adult faux pas via texting.
Kids, we promise, just hang in there even if it is by your last thread! Stay strong- everything has a tipping point and the worst will end!
I have just shared those years with my daughter and yes it was hard.But now high school is over and already she is blossoming with new friends in the big wide REAL world.Friends she can choose and not have to be with all day like when at school.I wish all teenagers could see past the school years and realise all experiences make you stronger and things do get better.I wish for them all to read Dr Suess 'Oh The Places You Will Go'