To be a teenage girl is to be constantly embarrassed, hurt, tired, ashamed, and confused.
Embarrassed for what I believe, what I think to be true. Regardless of what that is, it feels wrong for me to hold and cherish an opinion. It feels wrong because when someone else doesn’t believe in what I believe, everyone believes them.
It hurts.
To be a teenage girl is to be hurt by the world. It should be easy for me to brush off the downputs, the assumptions, and the disbelief experienced by others when they realize I am more than what they thought, but it isn’t.
It’s tiring.
To be a teenage girl is to be so, so tired. All the time. I am so tired of being forced to prove myself in every room I enter. When I look around and my voice is ignored. When I stand up and my body is noticed. When the ways in which I choose to present myself are taken so much more seriously than my words, but my words are all I have.
It’s shameful.
To be a teenage girl is to feel ashamed everywhere you go. It’s the internalization of the glances and the stares. The picking apart of the way you walk. Trying to sway your hips in just the right way. The words that come out of your mouth. You cannot be wrong because if you slip up that’s all you are. The way you dress, only revealing what others want you to reveal, but everyone wants you to reveal something different.
It’s confusing.
To be a teenage girl is to come to terms with the fact that, no matter what you do, you will never be right. You will never be good enough. You will never be able to satisfy everyone. No matter how tirelessly you work, day in, day out, something about you will be inherently wrong.
To be a teenage girl is to grow up hating yourself and then come to this shocking, earth shattering realization that you don’t actually hate yourself. Everyone else just hates you.