Growing Up

1/4/2013

A moment of honest reflection.

When I was 13 years old, high school was the scariest place I had ever encountered. I learned quickly that people, and children especially, can be very cruel. I didn't understand what the other girls spoke about or what they did, feeling ridiculous as I smudged my mums old eye-shadow over my eyelids in an attempt to look like they did. I had never kissed a boy or watched a 15 movie or really done anything at all that was called 'normal'. As a result, I stumbled along with my nose in a book and ignored the fact that I felt I didn't have a friend in the whole world.

When I was 14 years old, I believed the hatred around me had turned me bitter. I had a group of friends who still seemed so much mature than I did, so much more at ease with the world and with themselves. I cut myself and lashed out at my parents and failed tests in school. I swore and lied and pretended that acting as though I didn't care meant the same thing.

Between 15 and 16, I felt I had grown up some. I made new friends, who my parents liked and who seemed to like me. We spent our summers outside, rolling down hills and jumping in rivers and drinking cheap alcohol. I had a favourite band. I felt I had found myself. I met nice boys and I smiled and I felt that things would always be this way. I looked forward to growing up, to moving on from school and starting a career I was passionate about.

I am 17 years old. I no longer get any enjoyment out of leaving my bed. The nice boys proved not to be so nice after all. I lost most of those friends. My favourite band split up. I can't remember the last time the sun shined, or that I smiled, or that I believed I had a future. I see people around me every day happier than I am, self assured and confident and I look at myself and everything wrong with me and I wonder when things will get better again. I try to pinpoint when things got worse. I am crippled by my anxiety and flattened by my depression, choosing to lay in bed and watch the ceiling instead of interacting. When I laugh, the sound is so awkward and painful I cut it off before I am finished. Tomorrow will be the first day I leave the house with friends and I am terrified that I won't be able to cope. The skin on my wrists is so thin.

When I was 13 years old, growing up was what I wanted to do. When I was 14, growing up was what I had to do. When I was 15, it was what I felt I had done. At 17, I am digging my heels into the ground beneath my feet and begging not to grow any further. I have grown into someone I don't know, someone so warped by the thoughts in my head that I no longer recognize the face that stares back at me in a mirror. Someone once told me high school years are the best of your life. If that is true, I tremble for what my life will become after this. I have lost whatever I had which made me me; my ambition, my passion, my childhood, my innocence. I hate the person I have become with a passion so fiery it scares me. I don't have the energy to do anything to change this.