Hey, I know it’s hard being a teenage girl. There are a lot of factors–socially and emotionally–that are constantly changing, but the most important thing is to be true to yourself and not change for anyone.
Now, I’m going to share a little about my own experiences in high school and my own efforts to climb the social ladder. I tried twice and let me just say that both times, I fell hard.
The first time was in seventh grade. I knew most kids in my grade and everyone knew me. I was the kind of girl who wasn’t with the “popular” crowd, but everyone knew me and liked me because I talked to everyone, but I didn’t have a set group of my own. I finally tried to settle with a group of the “popular girls” because I was friends with one of them. I liked it for a while, but then I started getting really sad and kinda depressed. I’d write these sad poems, and I’d come home and scream into a pillow and do my fair share of crying.
I didn’t know why I was so upset but soon, I changed my friend group and was starting to feel better about myself.
Two years later, in ninth grade, I tried a similar experiment.
Despite having a great group of supportive friends, I made an effort to be friends with the “popular” kids again. Don’t get me wrong, they were all very nice, but they just weren’t very considerate. With them, I felt like I was alone in a group of people–trying so hard to be anything but invisible. We would stand in clumps and talk, and, for some reason, they would never listen to me.
I felt like a fake copy of myself, and, worst of all, I knew I was acting like someone I wasn’t in order to fit in.
I started to become melancholy, and I decided to go to the school counselor for the first and only time I have ever gone. She said some things that made sense and I realized that the only way my situation was going to change was if I changed it myself. So I stopped hanging out with that group, and I started spending all of my time with my group of supportive, unique, and “uncool” friends.
Immediately, my life started to change. I was happy all the time, and I could be myself. It is so much better to be unapologetically yourself, just like how I became when I felt free to say things without restriction or worrying that I wouldn’t fit in. None of us fit in. But we complimented each other perfectly.
Really, I just wanted to say that it takes action to incite change. And if you aren’t happy with your situation, then you owe it to yourself to change it.
