I was dumb, frustrated, angry, inexperienced, foolish, and worst of all, I was often right. I was dealing with some pretty heavy shit as a 15 year old. I had just started seriously questioning my gender. I was struggling with mental illness that was starting to cripple me because I didn’t know how to cope and couldn’t explain it well enough. My grades were slipping from those two things. Oh and I was starting to realize my parents didn’t love or like each other as my family began crumbling. And as a young millennial it was starting to become apparent I was about to inherit a world that wasn’t doing so great.

And at the same time I was a fucking moron. I couldn’t express what was wrong and if you’d asked me any of those things I’d’ve probably denied most of them. I straight up did deny the first two, knowingly lying on a psychiatric exam.

I needed the room to try and fail. But I also needed to be shown that what I was going through wasn’t what life was supposed to be like. I wish I could go back and tell my teenage self the words to express her needs, to slap her into studying (and slip her some Wellbutrin), and to reassure her that the lessons she’s learning from her parents’ marriage will provide her with equal measures of understanding necessary for her own happy marriage and fuel for therapy.

And yeah I try to apply those lessons to the teenagers I know