I am a teenage girl. I am a weird teenage girl. I am a teenage girl who feels like she is going through everything at once yet thinks she has no real problems to cry over. I am a teenage girl who feels like she is the only one with thoughts and problems in the world. I am a teenage girl who realizes that this is not true. But for now, here is your invite to the pity party!
Some of my hobbies include: telling jokes, having a never ending song play inside of my head, pretending no one can relate to me, feeling guilty for things I cannot change, and thinking that a piece of art was only meant for my eyes to see. Sometimes I feel like everyone around me is on a different planet in the universe and mine is the best planet to inhabit (...but I still want an invite to your planet. Can I come? Don't make me feel left out.)
After being sent home from college due to, in my mind, a virus that will never affect me, I have realized a few things. I hate that I use the word ‘thing’ so much. I love online shopping. I do not need a boy to make me happy. I enjoy spending time alone with myself, watching movies with myself, and laughing and crying with the characters on the screen like we are best friends that have never met. I wonder if anyone else loves spending time alone, or if the thought daunts them. Some people do not get a choice in the matter. I hate that I use the word ‘some’ so much. Sometimes, no other word fits.
I just finished watching the movie “The Edge of Seventeen” alone in my room. It is about a teenage girl, Nadine, who also feels like she is the only one in the world with problems. I was sad to see that by the end of the movie, she was not. Her life was what seemed to be miserable, but for some reason a part of me envied her. Maybe it was her style or remorseless actions or witty personality. Anyway, after watching it I thought that I would never identify with a character or movie as much as I do with Nadine and this movie, and that no movie would ever mean as much to me as this one. I wrote in my notes that whenever I feel lonely, I should watch “The Edge of Seventeen.” Who knows, maybe I’ll be watching it after moving into my first single-person apartment or when I am about to be buried in the ground. It is hard to say, especially considering I have not yet decided whether or not I want to be cremated.
I tend to do this a lot. After I read or watch or hear a piece of art I like, I praise it and act like it is mine and no one else’s. I often find myself writing down poetry lines in a journal, or dialogue from a book and song lyrics in the notes on my phone, or listening to the same song fifteen times in a row to prove its mine. Every time I listen to a song I like I have to read along with the lyrics. I have lost count of how many times I’ve rewinded a song to write a line of its lyrics verbatim into my phone. When I was still living in my dorm room, I would write the lyrics on a sheet of paper the length of my door in a specific order because of how much I related to them. Art resides with me too much sometimes.
Some of my passions include: writing songs, playing guitar and ukulele and piano and my voice, making short videos for my YouTube or TikTok, and making people laugh. My one dream in life is to be a singer who can produce her own songs perfectly and write lyrics that other girls are writing on their dorm room doors. When I am writing or playing an instrument while singing, every other thing in the world floats away and I am lost in whatever the song is about.
While writing music, I like to embody a character I have made up in my head and pretend I have been in love like her before, or have been cheated on like her, or heartbroken like her, or as found as her. All whilst being lost but feeling secure in who I am.
This confessional journal of mine may be considered oversharing. But all personal essays overshare. Right?
Instead of focusing on myself, I am going to focus on you. Whoever is reading this. Let me try to make your day. I might as well reward you for reading this far.
This is why you are beautiful. And I truly believe that everyone is beautiful. Even if you’re the meanest person I have ever met in my damn life. There is something beautiful about one’s roughness. Beauty is not superficial; this could be about your soul.
You like waking up to a plate of breakfast and a coffee or tea.
You like calling your parents, even if you dread hearing their critiques or voice.
You know your mom is always right, even when she’s not.
You like celebrating holidays.
You want to strive for more than mediocracy. (If you don’t right now, give yourself a few years. You’ll get sick of your mindset.)
You hate parts of yourself that others find endearing.
You lack confidence when you’ve been wearing your pajamas all day.
You have had a crush and never did anything about it.
You have had acne and went out in public.
You have been inside of your head longer than anyone else has (and you’re still here).
You have been in a fight and apologized.
You have forced yourself to keep running even when your lungs were giving out (physically or metaphorically).
You have listened to someone else’s problems, even if you had nothing to say.
You know things about yourself that no one else does.
You have embarrassed yourself and kept moving.
You have fallen and kept moving.
You have been rejected.
You have been uncomfortable.
You have faith in something other than money.
You are you.
You realized how cliché that was, mentally vomited, and kept reading.
The bottom line is, you have to keep reading to find it.
Yes, I am a teenage girl, and yes, I am weird and dramatic and think the world revolves around me because the life I know best is my own, and yes, I self-sabotage by going to bed at 3 AM every night after telling myself the night before that I would be in bed by 1, but I am hoping there is something therapeutic about reading the thoughts of a lost girl who doesn’t have her shit together. Maybe it makes you feel put together. Or maybe my thoughts make you think; a concept I can only pray I contrive in others.
