The last month of being a teenager

As I reach the end of my teenage years, I look back on how friendships, insecurities and lockdown have prepared me for the next chapter of my life...

Now I know many people celebrated ‘special’ birthdays in lockdown, whether it was your 21st or 50th. How you’d always remembered wanting a big party for it but you had to settle for a facetime call with your family and friends. Flowers sent to your house and a present left at your doorstep as your friend stands at the bottom of the drive with her mask on wishing she could hug you. You try to recreate your 18th birthday on your 20th and even though your family try to make it extra special, it’s not really the same.

I remember turning 17 in lockdown, 4 days after lockdown began in 2020. I’d always had such an excitement to turn 17, despite being a lover of even numbers, the age has always appealed to me so much. Whether it was Abba singing about a dancing queen that was young and sweet and only 17 or Taylor Swift singing about being 17 and not knowing anything. It felt like such a carefree age, an age where I could still be a kid without any responsibilities or societal pressures on me. And still to this day I'll always have a soft spot for 17 year old me, I feel like she shaped me and made me who i am now.

The summer I was 17 was so thrilling when I look back. I’d be awakened by the birds chirping every morning just like you did when you were a little kid. The air smelt like freshly cut grass and suddenly you feel 6 years old again, about to put on your primary school summer dress and be layered in suncream. School was online and you didn’t have to abide by the usual school hours, you were on your own timetable. I’d wake up at 11am and watch Netflix with my Dad, usually the new season of Money Heist or Tiger King, until lunch. I’d facetime my two best friends, Daisy and Imogen, for hours to not miss out on my daily serotonin boosts. My sister would cook the family dinner and we’d all sit outside until twilight laughing and learning tik tok dances to entertain ourselves.

However, it was not all smiles and laughter. I think 17 was mentally one of the hardest years for me.

Growing up I undertook dance lessons from age 2 and have grown up always being relevantly active. When i was 9 i took up cross country running and when i turned 16 i started working out. When i look back i think why was a 16 year old girl doing intense ab workouts at 6am in the morning. There's always been this voice saying that I had to look slim next to my skinny friends who had naturally fast metabolisms. I have to look good for the house parties and maybe then someone will like me or give me attention. I must maintain the same figure I had when I was dancing intensely at age 13 and when I hadn't hit puberty yet. Despite being the fittest I ever was at 16, I was the most insecure. Only now that I'm older do I understand that I struggled with body dysmorphia at 16 and 17. In my mind I always looked bigger than i really was. So when i was 17 and all my sporty activities got put on hold due to Covid, I didn’t realise how much thoughts on my body image would start to consume me.

My eating habits remained the same, but the amount of exercise i was participating in changed. Now don't get me wrong, I was eating a completely normal amount of food= 3 meals a day plus snacks. Yet my body started to change and it completely ruined my self confidence and worth. I didn’t want to leave the house and binged more in the upset of how i felt. I would cry myself to sleep at how insecure I felt and how I couldn't go back to school looking different when I was always known to have that dancer’s physique. But then summer and travel was put on hold due to Covid and there were no bikinis and beaches to worry about and soon enough it was winter and jumpers were back to being the uniform.

As I tried to focus more on my self love the thought of exercising became debilitating. I realised that the more I worked out the more obsessed and aware I became of my body, it became my prime focus. Even the idea of going on a walk triggered me as I was terrified of falling back into that mindset of constant exercise and putting down of myself on how I look. I buried those thoughts and didn't even acknowledge them despite them keeping me up at night. But then something changed in me. I did not want to sit in this state forever. I started to journal all my feelings, remove all negative accounts from social media promoting diet culture and exercise and focused on working on my self love over losing weight. I think a lack of education didn’t help though as I didn’t know how much women’s weight fluctuates and how normal it is, whether that’s from stress, periods or even the slightest change in your diet. Then I turned 18 and was back at school and I stopped caring about how others physically perceived me and focused more on being a good person and a good friend. I learnt to love how my body looked and accepted that this is what a healthy, womanly bodily looks like.

As I look back on my teenage years, with one month left until I’m 20, I know 19 will be my favourite age. 19 to me is one whole year of knowing my uni friends who ultimately showed me how much friendships can save you. These women I met from all across the country showed me how to love myself, to appreciate myself as a person and a friend and ultimately became my support system away from home. 19 is full of happy memories, laughter and is not tainted by sleepless nights over how I look. 19 is choosing to live your life and to not be held back by how insecure you feel.

When I was 11, all I looked forward to was getting on the bus every morning with my best friend Daisy and laughing till we cried. Everything was so fun and exciting and new to us.

When I was 14, all I looked forward to was going to get mochas before school with Daisy and sitting at the McDonalds window sill in our home town people watching.

When I was 16, all I looked forward to was the house parties every weekend and going over to my best friend Imogen’s house, sharing our wardrobes and doing each other's makeup and trying to act sober when our parents picked us up in the early hours of the morning.

When I was 19, all I looked forward to was coming home from a long day of Uni lectures and sitting on the sofas of my uni flat with my girls whilst the boys would smoke out the kitchen with their awful cooking.

But as I approach 20, I don't know what I’m looking forward to or what to expect. I know my friends will always be around and I guess that is the constant of my teenage years. I know I will never be alone in my 20s as long I have my friends.

As I look back on my teenage years all I feel is happiness and contentment. As at the end of the day you’ll only remember the good memories. I’ll always carry love for the friends that will be in my life forever and the ones I no longer talk to but were there for me when I needed them at that point in my life. I often think about the girls who took me under their wing in Year 7 and showed me what it was like to be in a girl group. Who I shared my first sleepovers with and who took me trick or treating for the first time. There was no pressure on us to grow up and we perceived the world so innocently. Then there’s the friends that I've had since primary school who, no matter what, have never left and showed me that if people wanted to stay in your life they would.

I must say entering my twenties terrifies me, this next decade I may find my dream job, make completely new friends, maybe find a home, have a child or even get married. But knowing our economy right now, I’ll probably leave half of that to deal with in my 30s.

As I watched my little cousin turn 13 last week, I looked at him with so much excitement and jealousy. He’s about to enter the most important and developmental part of his life where his memories will shape him for life. I see him do silly little youtube challenges and laugh so hard, just like I did when I was thirteen with my friends. I remember holding him as a new-born baby and now he’s entering his teens as I am leaving them. We’re all growing up and no one can stop it.

I feel like once you enter your 20s you're meant to be mature, you can’t use the excuse of being a kid anymore when you make mistakes. But when have you ever actually felt the age that you turn on your birthday because in my heart I still feel 17. I once heard someone compare us to onions. We are all made of so many layers and every layer represents each age we’ve lived and experienced. We cry like we did when we were 2 years old, we need our mother’s love like we did when we were 1, we belly laugh uncontrollably like we did when we were 7 and we’ll learn from each age. So instead of judging the 20 year old who had one too many drinks on the night out, see the 16 year old girl who’s still learning her tolerance to pink gin and lemonade.

A part of me feels like my teenage years were stolen from me. I blame it on Covid but I know the real thief is time. Time will only go by faster and I know I have so much to learn. But I know I must thank my teenage self for creating such a strong woman who is ready to move onto this next chapter of her life.