The Surprising Letter A Mother Found In Her Teenager’s Drawer

Yes, during some of my tantrums I am typical. The quintessential teen. I am fifteen and keep a diary. What you read is just part of that diary, which is locked and hidden of course. Hidden in a place you will never find. At least I hope you don’t trip over it when you’re clearing my things, believing you’re restoring some sort of order to a room where I feel genuinely lost.

If you could find it, it would be a good reason for you, the best I could think of without a doubt, to become a bad mother. Overprotective, tense, in a word unbearable. Besides, I think you would only be feeding your own fears. Fear that sometimes makes you have sleepless nights or wait for me until very late. Because yes, in my mind I am considering options that you would rule out.

When I was young, I asked about external things. What is it? What is it for? For a teenager like me, the questions are even more uncertain. They have to do with my inner world. I’ve stopped asking these questions because I don’t believe you have the answers, at least not my answers. That’s why I prefer my friends in such matters. With them I share the complicity of not knowing, the excitement of each new discovery. If you went back thirty years in time, you would understand.

As we grow up, we forget

This is something that amazes me about adults. They forget all too quickly that they too were once teenagers. How naughty they were, how they fell in love for the first time, or pretended to be sick to avoid going to school. How they turn a blind eye to the clock to get home late.

The struggle they fought for their independence. And how they resolved the confrontation between what others expected and the things they really wanted. The price they had to pay for choosing one of the two options, short-term or long-term. What were you like when you were a teenager?

In addition, if those who have survived this tendency, it is likely that the habit has some kind of adaptation aspect. Something that makes it easier for each member to play their part. For you to have your expectations and for me to disappoint them. That this can be one of the first more difficult challenges and so that I can face them. I think if Darwin’s theory were explained in this way, there would be fewer people in the world who would ask themselves what was so important about what that man had to say.

Thinking the world revolved around me…

You know, as a kid with that selfishness that kids are so famous for, I thought the world was one big stage. And that when I didn’t see them, people were getting ready to put together a script that they would later run for me.

To prove this theory, I often tried to be unpredictable. Even if I wanted a candy I’d say no. Just to see how others would act if I behaved unexpectedly. My intention was for “Big Brother” to confess everything out of desperation that his plans would be messed up.

Let’s say I got lost several times after that in that game of coherence or incoherence. Sometimes longer than a day. Hence my mood, my resistance and my acceptance change as a teenager. It stems from the attempt to put everything into perspective. And to not feel the weight of the sensation that there is nothing safe to cling to.

There is nothing infallible or over which I have absolute control. Because even your best friends can disappoint you and put off the tests you’ve studied so hard for. You could call it luck or luck, but it is more fickle than the drops that fall on a sunny day.

What do I have to do to be a good teen?

But the most complicated part of growing up has to do with a question that encompasses the inability of my friends and myself. I don’t know what else to do to be good, to be accepted. To feel loved and respected.

I have seen how this question has changed my friends and how it has transformed me. The first requirement could be to have the perfect body. That’s ridiculous considering our bodies develop in an anarchic way and basically do whatever they want. You may want to be tall and attractive, but if your genes have decided you aren’t, then it won’t be. That’s when you start to understand why someone invented the torture of high heels.

You begin to understand how much harder it is to gain someone’s respect when you are little. Just like when your friends tell you you’re a little too fat or a little too thin. Criteria can be perfectly adapted to the curves we see in women in magazines: not too much, not too little, just the right amount.

People who knew and recognized you are now starting to treat you as if something about you is terrible. And they do it in such a radical way and so often that you start to believe it yourself. That there’s something wrong with you, something that isn’t working. Plus, the things you do to fix this just seem to make you stand out even more. To be honest – your feet are a bit too big and it wasn’t God’s intention for you to wear heels at all.

Some questions seem to have no answers

You would like to ask if anyone knows how to make up for the things that nature has not given you or that it has not given you much of. But you’ve already seen how your friends have failed at this. At that point, you can withstand almost anything, except appear vulnerable. It would be unacceptable to give any indication to others that their teasing is having any effect on you.

All you can do is project a confident image. This is another one of the attitudes you must have to be good. Not just being confident, but always appearing confident. In this way, you end up giving the impression that nothing matters to you.

Within this profile that teenagers need for their ‘entry into life’, I realized that I also had to get good grades. That was one way to keep you happy. I also had to make it look like I was putting in some effort. But not too much. I had to appear hardworking, but also smart.

Also among my classmates it was also frowned upon to get bad grades. Unless the group of teenagers see it as your own choice rather than a lack of skills. If they thought the latter, then it was already too late for you. You would be one of the losers forever. A group that you can easily belong to, but unfortunately you can’t get out of that easily.

In that sense, a seven or an eight were the best grades. Just like it was better not to raise your hand too often. Or to answer the teacher’s questions too quickly. Or don’t answer the question correctly at all and instead say something that the important kids would find funny. This kind of teenager is now called an influencer.

It’s best to stay somewhere in the middle

One day at school we learned something about Gaussian functions. Presumably, many natural distributions adapt to this type of function. So there always seems to be a greater density around the center and less at the ends.

So this seemed very natural to me, because it’s always dangerous to be at the ends. Don’t show emotions or show too many emotions, never get angry or be angry all the time. If you want to be a quiet teen, it’s best to be somewhere in between these extremes. That way, it’s much easier to blend in with the crowd. Camouflage, as it used to be called, fits very well with the image I try to portray as a teenager. The image that the world doesn’t bother me.

This is where the page of this diary ends, which I, of course, accidentally put in the wrong place. Saying this to your face would be disgraceful. That’s why I’m leaving it here for you between my socks. Like a lost page in the middle of the order you want to create. Perhaps now you understand my struggle to find my own kind of order. A task that is not easy or simple, but which is nevertheless exciting.

And, of course, I love you, something I apparently never say…