You were young. You remember your childhood clearly. Some of us were blessed with vivid, fun, memorable childhoods. Some of us had broken, heartbreaking childhoods, but you were young, your ignorance and small amount of understanding of the world shielded you (ever so slightly) from the pain you endured.
But now, we have no more excuses. No more shields. Our guards and childhood pleasures are taken down. We're completely vulnerable and completely unprepared for the world, even though its blasting at us in every direction.
When we turned 13, we almost felt the impact. The world was just waiting and excited to overdose us with reality. It can even seem the very day we turned thirteen our lives changed, the way your own family looks at us changed.
For me, in a dramatic sense, this is how my 13th birthday felt...

With a huge gust of air, I unleashed my biggest blow onto the candles. Excited. My excitement carried on a few seconds, after all, I was a big girl now, but then... I looked around the room. I looked at my mother, my father. Grandparents. Friends. Almost simultaneously, they're smiling faces dropped. They all reached their hands up to their jaw's, and slowly pulled their smiling masks off. What I saw, changed my life. After I blew out the candles, the ruthless candles declaring my adolescence, it seemed as though the whole world dropped its shield. My family took off the masks. The masks hiding their deep pain, their financial problems, problems in general. The world... it stopped pretending...
Pretending everything was OK.

Perhaps no one else felt this impact quite the same way, but you can't deny, you felt it. The day before your birthday, you thought this thought, "I can't wait."

You couldn't wait to drive, to date, to have a job, to go out with friends, to be responsible.

My parent's warned me with this simple phrase, "You'll see." Following the phrase was a malicious smile. I never believed them, until I blew out the candles.

It's funny, how after my birthday, all I wanted was to be a kid again. You know you can relate.

The year I turned 13, was the year I fell in love. His name was Damian. I fell in love, I lost my BESTFRIEND, my parent's fought around me! These simple life problems were HUGE blows for me. I knew as soon as my life started throwing punches, I would have to fight... for the rest of my life. That 13th year of my life, I suffered through a rough, (and first) breakup. I lost my BEST friend, my sister. I lost all my friends. I was losing my family. I was losing this fight, and it had barley been a year.

The next year following was even worse, it was messier, stupider.

Bad friends, bad school, bad boyfriend. Bad outcomes. Rebel, after rebel, after broken law, after broken relationships. But luckily, I guess, I was growing used to it. Used to this life of a "big girl".

You see, your parents remember their teen years, they say they understand, but they also know they never will.

Because your teenage life breaks you down and ruins you, but it differs for each person.

But we teens feel the same thing, we feel the conflict between missing our childhood, our protection, and our new life as an adult.

We do stupid things, we say stupid things, but we're NOT stupid. We're not problems, we're not far gone.


We're growing.

We're just teenagers.

We're just fighting, to stay alive.