A
female
age
30-35,
BlondeBabe x
writes:Dear Teenage Me As it stands, I am just about to turn 20 which means soon I will be waving goodbye to my teenage years. But, what journey it has been. This probably won’t seem a lot to some people but to me is moving on to the scarier years, the years when your real life begins. All I can think is that before I know it I will be nearly 30 and here’s hoping by then I have my life together. But the older I get, the faster time seems to move. Looking back, I can see every mistake I made, every embarrassing moment and every lesson that I learnt the hard way; oddly I don’t think I would change a thing about it. However, at the time I don’t think I would have agreed. I remember falling out with friends; tasting my first sip of alcohol and thinking it was the worst thing but carrying on because it was ‘cool’; wearing incredibly bad make up and thinking I was the best thing going and most embarrassingly crying all night because I thought my broken heart would never mend. At times, being a teenager is the worst thing imaginable, with the amount of hormones and changes you have to deal with no wonder we are all a little crazy at this point. It’s the time were you transitions into adulthood and suddenly, everyone seems a little more grown up. I remember the worst time being 14/15 when you want to be treated more like an adult, but you just aren’t quite there yet. Even though you want to be treated more fairly, that just doesn’t seem to happen. But the biggest change is suddenly relationships seem all the more real. However, most importantly, you learn to love. Your teenage first love is the one you will always remember. Even with all the awkwardness that goes with it. Teenage relationships, especially speaking from a female’s point of view, teach you a whole lot, very quickly. My first relationship to remember it now was very awkward and it came with a lot of embarrassing moments. For example, one issue was my braces and once, during a kissing lesson, I manage to burst my lip and even the poor guy’s lips on them. The struggle was very much real at that point. On another occasion, he went to surprise me but I got such a fright and I accidently punched him in his ‘private area’, that’s happened to a lot of people, right? Probably not, but it was a lesson learned on his part. For any teenager out there reading this, just make every mistake you can while you still have the chance and remember, it might seem hard just now but you will get through it. The little things that seem important just now like cliques, boyfriends and wearing the best clothes soon won’t matter as much. If it seems hard, just smile and get through it because I promise you it will get better. The teenage years are what mould you are as a person, they help shape the adult that you will become. With that in mind, I will remember those years with a smile. If I could tell past me anything I would say don’t worry, enjoy this time while you because when you leave school and get into the real world it only gets harder.Here’s to the teenage years, you won’t be forgotten too easily!
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female
reader, Abella  +, writes (9 April 2015):
 what a wonderful account of your teenage years and the things you learned along the way.
Lovely article and I enjoyed reading all of it.
A
male
reader, mfj78 +, writes (19 March 2015):
HiA terrific article which I myself could have written at nearly twenty! (for the record I turned 37 last week)It is scary moving away from your teenage years as suddenly everything does become more serious and instead of looking forward you suddenly start to appreciate the passage of time.One minute you think "Wow is it really three years since I left school...seems like yesterday" to suddenly seeing school as a misty memory in some ways of a different life you once had. Yet just a short while ago a year seemed an eternity, now it seems such a short space of time.We contemplate the difference between our emotions and things which were so close to our hearts as a teenager, compared with life in our early twenties. We cringe at things we did a year earlier that at the time we thought was the most important/heartbreaking/loving thing and the centre of our universe. Equally we realize that in many ways those things are childs play compared tot he more serious life we are starting to enter as we leave behind our teenage years. But far from leaving behind your formative years, that journey will continue for a while yet! Between the age of 20 and 27 we undergo perhaps as profound a change as we do between the ages of 13 and 19, but in a very different way. Many of us are shaped perhaps more by those early years of adulthood up to our mid to late 20s than our teens. I remember me and my friends at 20 - We thought we were really grown up and mature adults. We would actually get quite defensive if anyone called us teenagers. Excuse me we were in our twenties thank you very much! We would see teenagers as either those to advise from our new experienced twenty something view point or look for any opportunity to discuss such and such a teenage persons immaturity with our elders (of course an immature attempt at showing our own maturity). I don't think this behaviour was untypical. We saw our work, problems, relationships and so forth as being far more serious than our teenage equivalents. We dressed differently to signal that we were no longer teens but adults in our twenties and quickly became annoyed at our younger family members behaviour which we ourselves perpetrated just a short while earlier.Yet looking back from the point of view of late 30s, or indeed mid to late 20s, one can appreciate, in the nicest possible sense, how young 20-24 actually is. I remember at 20 being single and out of work and worrying that time was against me. I look back and laugh at that now as I realize the huge gulf between the level of maturity and ability to take on responsibility we perceived ourselves as having compared to how we would be in our mid to late twenties. The strange thing for me reading your brilliant article is that you end by saying our teenage years wont be easily forgotten. In that as young adults we all still cling to vivid memories of embarrassment, awkwardness, sexual development, relationships, love, etc...yet after our mid twenties onwards those things from our teens seem so insignificant in many ways and seem to be from such a different world! I guess perspectives change as you get older. I remember going through the monumental event of starting secondary (high) school at 11 and it seemed so important, so huge and so daunting. Yet by the time I had started work at 17 my memories of leaving junior school for high school was one of indifference. I had a huge crush on a girl at 17 that broke my heart. Well into my twenties I clung to that hurt and loss. I always felt a part of me died the day K---- broke my heart. At 20 I saw I decided I would be more mature about it and philosophical while maintaining it as an important mile stone in my development.......Yet I haven't thought about, or spoke of, K---- for perhaps fifteen years. Time moves on. Adult, serious relationships and all they entail make the heart break over K--- at 17 seem like childs play. Almost losing my father to a heart attack, losing close friends, losing my bloody hair...they lend perspective.One thing you will notice is that time goes far slower in your early twenties than it ever will again! At 20 things from a decade ago seem a million years in the past. At 30 things form 10 years ago seem like yesterday. from about 25 onwards time seems to go even quicker each year. Enjoy your (still) young age while you can :-)All the best! Don't get old too quick ;-)Mark
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