The Understanding Long Forgotten

The world does not try hard enough to understand teenagers.

They pass by in hallways, tall and powdered with makeup. Slumping over phones plugged into a stream of endless emotions packed in songs, in stress. 

At first, it seems easy to judge. 

The girls in ripped jeans, iron-straightened hair, and lipstick smeared lips must be the divas. They are dramatic, only caring for looks. How they must exasperate their parents. 

The "jocks", packed with muscle, with headbands and headphones must have no knowledge. 

And the small freshman, moving anxiously and quickly  around the hallways. Excited, but treated the same because they will, one day, become the exact same. 

It's funny how quickly people are to give labels to an entire population. Books interpret teenagers this way. Some adults do also. Maybe even children, led by the influence of books, movies, and stories form parents. 

I'm here to say otherwise, really. 

As a young girl, I used to say to myself, "I'm not going to be like them when I grow up. I'm always going to be the obedient daughter. I'm never going to make mistakes". I, I, I. . . It really seemed so easy to stay away from people I supposed had no depth. How wrong and disgusting. 

As a teenager now, I see the wrongs I've made. Mistakes are setting in and with every teenager. Small mistakes unsettle our worlds, and the fragile emotions we keep hidden under the surface. There are days when my parents criticize me for a little mistake and I simply burst out crying. Sometimes, I'm angry. Other times, I feel hopeless. It's not depression, not peer influence, but simply the mood and fear of the future. 

Teenagers are not children, they cannot run without the consequences of falling and breaking a bone. Permanently. That's right. Mistakes are permanent. Not taking the right class could take you out of the future you want and have worked for all your short life. However, we are also not adults. Our lives move fast and wobbly. Sometimes, there are no right answers, only a grey area we have to choose from. 

Teenagers fear, it is the cause of emotion. Emotions that rile us and force us to make the wrong choices. We fear each other. After all, we're competing in classes, in social status. Sometimes, we feel dangerous because we begin reaching the adult puberty where reality is introduced to us. It scares us to be capable of such things. Of taking roads that desperation sometimes causes. 

In other words, we live in the moment. 

To live quintessentially, we have to expel the fear of failure and letting people down. We have to look beyond the surface and dig deeper, but not naively and burn ourselves. Teenagers, walk with caution, but relax. We are all feeling the exact things, just at different levels and times. Expel fears and just live. Enjoy the grey area while we can. Is that not a life of a teenager?

- Trang Hoang