(17, VA, USA) Anonymous - Edge of Seventeen

Nobody will ever prepare you as a child for the emotions you will feel as a teenager. We all start off as little, innocent kids who think the word poop is as bad as they come. We are naive and believe that every new buddy we make in elementary school will be in our lives forever…if only that was the case. But the good news is, you are not alone. When I was little, I believed that all my friends would be in my life forever, I would have like a million bridesmaids at my wedding. However, now as I graduate high school in two months, I look back nostalgically. Majority of my friends have moved away and that was the last we’ve ever seen each other, now they only exist in my memory. Nobody will ever prepare you for the loneliness you will feel at seventeen. You will look around at all your friends who have significant others and while you could always be the third-wheel…it would never fill that emptiness inside. That’s how I feel. I have great friends who I know love me in their own way, but everyone has their own best friend and/or significant other. I have myself and my cat, we spend our weekends in bed watching rom-coms as everyone else is partying. Don’t get me wrong, I would choose this little life over getting wasted every weekend without a doubt, but the feelings that accompany it…i wouldn’t mind if they disappeared. Seventeen is such a weird age to be. You are expected to be independent but yet you are still a minor so you don’t really have that independence. You are expected to be a full-time student while being able to keep up with having a job to support yourself. All while trying to maintain your social life and mental health. It is rough out here, but the light at the end of the tunnel is that you are not alone. It took me so long to realize this but, I'm not the only seventeen year old in this world that feels this way. There are thousands, possibly millions, of teenagers who are all on the same boat as us. We all try to help each other afloat while trying not to drown. That’s what I'm trying to say; you are never alone. Your teenage years can be lonely. Especially when you think every other person your age has everything figured out. You convince yourself everyone but you, has found their friend group and forever person. You brainwash yourself into thinking everyone else has the perfect body, mindset, job, or life. But I promise, you are not the only one who feels like this. There are so many of us whose minds are in a scramble and don’t have everything perfectly structured. And I believe that’s the beauty of it…no matter how alone we feel, we never really are. There are millions of strangers we have yet to meet that feel just as we do. Your teenage years can be a lonely time. But when you grow into the next chapters of your life such as college or life after high school, you will realize that this is the most precious time, the time to get to understand yourself, to find comfort and joy in your own company. At the end of the day, you will still be here and you will find your people. So please enjoy your teenage girls and being seventeen, while it’ll go by so fast in the blink of an eye.