To me, being a teenager is more than just a number. Every year, we add another candle to our cake, glowing in the warm flicker of the flames, and we blow it out. In the eyes of someone much older than us, we’re nostalgia, we’re a plant just beginning to grow roots. In the eyes of someone younger, we’re the example of the opportunity and novelty brought by growing up. But there’s nothing to describe the feeling of being a teen yourself, like being told to describe yourself and thinking, “Who am I?”. To be a teen, it feels like having the weight of the expectations of everyone around you on your shoulders, and at the same time, feeling disdainful stares on the back of your neck from your seniors.  

I’ve always felt a struggle to find where I fit. The curiosity of childhood mixes with the distrust of growing up and suddenly everyone doesn’t feel the same. Suddenly, I’m filled with mixed emotions and worry and jealousy and an overwhelming want to be seen, to be good, to know the comfort of stability and innocence. Like a puzzle piece, I grow, nooks and crannies and bumps and cracks and it becomes so much harder to find that perfect fit, to find my identity.

My identity as a teen is just as much my identity as it is my struggle to find it. We are insecure, happy, sad, and uncomfortable all at once. Especially when it’s 2024. The teens of then are not the teens of now. We are exposed to the ugly outside world, of politics, famine, and of existential problems that feel out of our reach. And so our humor, ridiculous and often sarcastic as it is, reflects all the troubles we see.  That’s what it means to be a teen now. 

If I had advice for all the people in different stages of life than me, I would tell them to record their life. I have a bad memory, and it has made it harder for me to remember who I was in the past, and who the people around me were. Take pictures, write your feelings, even just keep the names of your friends and peers around somewhere. A simple name or picture is enough to make me remember a world of things I’ve forgotten, even if it’s just bittersweet, heart-pulling emotions. There is nothing like looking at yourself in the past, like a dusty mirror, and understanding yourself with a deeper meaning than before.