I turned 13 in 2007, and I had lots of plans for how I wanted my life to turn out. I wanted to be a novelist and a doctor, and I wanted to marry a good man. I mostly just wanted to grow up.
I’m not one of those people who spend their days wistfully wishing they were children again. Things are better now than they were before. 13-year-old me at least got that right.
13-year-old me wanted to be a goth or a punk kid with dyed hair and black clothes. I wanted to wear arm warmers every day and actually write in a journal, rather than just own 15. These days, I manage to work low-key punk on occasion, and I have knit arm-warmers from Etsy I wear ironically. My brightly colored hair is gone, but it had its run. 13-year-old me had me pegged there, too.
13-year-old me hadn’t really listened to music all that much. I made a friend who was obsessed with music, so I began mimicking her. I jammed to Tegan and Sara all day, I eventually developed some taste of my own and started listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I had to listen to Rihanna, Carrie Underwood, P!nk and Fergie in secret. I couldn’t be caught dead enjoying pop music.
I got over that one. I still like my grunge music, but I also scream Miley Cyrus lyrics and treat “Uptown Funk” like the piece of gold it is.
But at 13, I was also depressed and frustrated. I thought there was no option for me to exist outside of the boxes people made for me. My mother wanted a pretty, classy Southern Belle. My friends wanted me to be soft-edgy, with exquisite (by their standards) music taste and dedication to being happy—but not too happy.
I just wanted to be a kid dressed in black who wrote bad poetry and bad stories. Who worked on novels she never finished. The kid who got her guitar and played it badly— but she still played.
Many of us look back on our young teen years either cringing or with fondness, but there’s a lot of pain that lives in our 13 years. Puberty makes us crazy. Things become “uncool,” and once that starts, it can’t go back. Mean girls get meaner, bullies get crueler, and even if we had a great time, the pressure can be overwhelming.
8 years on, being 13 wasn’t as bad as I thought it was— but it was still bad. I rarely admitted my pain to my parents or friends and when I did they told me I was dramatic. But I felt real things. I felt hard things, and I know I’m not alone.
When I have children, I hope to be a little kinder to them. The problems we had at 13 weren’t the end of the world, but they felt like it to me and they’ll feel like it to them.
The least I can do is listen without dismissing them.
