Open letter to my eleventeen year old and her peers.

Dear teenager,

  This is the hardest time in your life. Adults should really cut you more slack. It's a really bizarre place to feel like you can't emotionally miss your mommy and at the same time be tough and strong and independent. Not a baby but you're not an adult. Your emotions and your hormones are running rampant and your life is basically a catastrophe. Your friendships are all being put to the test because all of you are raging hormonal idiots. Boys stink. Girls are motional basketcases. How on earth do we make it to adulthood? How on earth do we make it through this trying time in one piece with any friends left? We rage and rage against literally nothing but our own frustrations. Being a teenager is a nightmare.

 This is a time when you feel like no one is taking you seriously and you can say everything it's in your head and it'll never come out the right way. And if anybody respects you and really treats you like a grown-up you start to miss being treated special like a little kid. You're in between stage and nothing makes sense. All you know that you just want to grow up get out of your parents house yada yada yada yada. Also "when I grow up I'll be nothing like so-and-so and such such".

My dear teenager. Just know that everyone goes through this passage. Most make it out alive. And everyone is better for the lessons they learn teenhood even though it seems like the struggle is stupid. All the drama all the friendships all the arguments all the fights with your parents. Those will all be worth it eventually when you're grown-up. When you have a teenager of your own, you will literally hear your parents words coming through your mouth and your very own teenagers will roll their eyes and sigh dramatically because now you "will never understand what they are going through". That déjà vu in itself is just as dramatic as what you're going through as a teenager. I promise.

 With your body changing and all the things you're learning in health class being so disgustingly real, we should probably just give you breathing room to vent and try not to point and laugh when you're hysterical. Because even though we think what you're crying about screaming about laughing about maniacally being crazy about, is super stupid and pathetic and trivial. That doesn't mean it's not the end of the world type of important to you. As grown-ups we should try to pull from our memory banks and recall what it was like to be you. Remember what it was like to be teased or taunted for having big boobs when you're sixth-grader. Or be laughed at in gym class if you are a boy because you're skinny and small and in jock minds inadequate. The world is cruel almost all the time in different ways. But I feel like it's the most cruel to a teenager. Not only are things complicated, but dammit nobody understands you! since we were once just like you we should try to remember and try to understand you.

Sincerely,
Some teens Mom


Ps. And grownups, if were nicer to our youth maybe we can expect them to be nicer to each other.