*Image credit goes to thi.dee on Instagram, who kindly provided me with some illustrations to use on this blog.

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Hello to all of you beautiful people of the Internet!

Can you tell I am in a good mood today? The sun is shining, birds are chirping and this post is a collaboration with the one and only Arshia, aka Words from Adaria! She writes such evocative and brilliant poetry, short stories and rants on her blog, so definitely pay her a little visit if you are into that stuff (as you are reading my blog, chances are you are!) We have been talking about working together on a post for months, so I feel thrilled to finally share this post with you all.

This collaboration is based around the life as a teenager and our individual experiences and thoughts on it. Arshia and I came up with six questions each, which we will both be answering. By comparing our two posts you are bound to find some differences and similarities. I found this idea to be so intriguing because apart from obviously being two different people, we were also brought up in different cultures – I am excited to see if that will have an impact on our individual answers.

At the bottom of this post you will find a little photo diary of some of my favourite memories from my teen life and the link to Arshia’s answers and her own photo album!

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★What’s your favourite memory of your teen life so far?

Most of my favouroite memories can be found in the photo gallery down below. All of them involve my friends/family. The thing all of those memories have in common is that I had fun – a lot of it.

★What’s one thing you wish teens stopped doing?

All of those ridiculous social media trends.

★What book describes teen life the most realistically in your eyes?

I had to think about this one for a while (because hello, bookworm) but if I had to choose I’d say it’s Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell just because I could relate to the main character a lot. In many ways, it reflected some of my own experiences in my life so far.

★What’s one song that would be the soundtrack of your life right now?

Sunflower – Rex Orange County

★What advice (that you’ve learnt over the years) would you give your younger self?

Don’t waste your time investing into friendships you know aren’t good for you. It will get you nowhere and leave you hurt.

★Write a poem that describes the life as a teenager.

yearning for more

only to realise later

what you had was more

than enough.

★When you grow out of your teenage years, what’s one thing you’ll miss about being a teenager?

I turned 19 a few days ago which means I only have a year left until I’m not a teen anymore. I think I’ll miss the free pass you get from society. That “oh, she’s young and allowed to make mistakes” kind of mentality. As much as I am looking forward to my 20s, I do think that things will gradually start to change. Things will become more serious and (excuse my wording) fucking up will soon come with larger consequences.

★What was one thing you learnt about yourself during your teen years?

I think I learnt to be me, even though that sounds stupid. In my early teens a lot of my time was spent on pleasing others or fitting into this mold. I wanted to stand out but at the same time fit in. I didn’t want to be different in a “negative” way, I guess. It was only when I stopped trying so hard that I came to learn that in the end, if I can’t accept myself, if I can’t be myself, then how can I expect others to do that? If I don’t love me for me, then I won’t be able to love others. I also learnt that if I set my mind to something, I can actually achieve it if I work hard enough for it. That was a big realisation for me because I used to doubt myself and my abilities a lot back when I was younger. Sometimes, I still find myself doing so, only now I have this urge to prove myself wrong.

 

★Describe your life as a teenager in five words. (could be a sentence, or individual adjectives)

What am I doing, help?

★What were your opinions and expectations about the teenage life as a child? 

I think as a child I always looked at teenagers with admiration. They seemed like they had direction and were “so cool”. They knew what they wanted and they took it. They had so many cool experiences.

Now that I’ve actually been a teenager for a while, I know that I certainly didn’t have direction, a sense of purpose or even the slightest idea of what I wanted. Still don’t fully know, if I’m being completely honest here.

★As a teenager, do you feel those opinions and expectations have been validated or fulfilled?

I think the one thing I expected that actually proved itself to be true is that you experience a lot of things. Were they all good? No. But even the bad experiences pushed me to become the person I am today.

★What’s something you want to do, while you’re still a teenager?

I actually thought about this a lot and truthfully, I still haven’t come up with an answer I am satisfied with. I just want to continue to work hard on the things that matter to me and hopefully make lots of great memories.

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MEMORIES

A PHOTO DIARY

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So that is the end of this post and I hope you enjoyed reading a little insight about my life as a teen. Seeing as everyone’s experiences are different, I would love to know if you can relate to anything I said or what your answers to any of the given questions are. 

A big virtual hug goes out to all of you teens out there, teenage life can sometimes be harder than one might think. It can be a very tumultuous, confusing, and emotional time. A big shout-out goes to my lovely collab partner, Arshia, go check her post out! 

★Click here to visit Arshia’s post★