Being 13

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Really I'm so glad to be an adult, in a serious relationship with a mature man. I remember when I was 13 I was so awkward and clueless. It was a summer evening, I was 13 and my sister was 14, and she had her first boyfriend. We went with her friend to a phone booth to call him, feeling really nervous but giggling as well. He picked up and the friend spoke first, then my sister had a rather short but awkward conversation with him. And then they passed the phone to me to speak to him. I didn't know this boy from Adam and Eve, so I really shyly mumbled "hi..." and he awkwardly mumbled back "hi." And that was it. Then we put the phone down and my sister and her friend screamed with excitement and delight because we had completed this mission.

Ugh, I would never want to live those awkward days of early teenage life again. I found being 6 much easier than being 13. And I find being 35 is much easier than being 21. Although I was less awkward at 21, I was much more aware than when I was 13, so I knew what I was missing out on and felt like my life was going nowhere, as I was unemployed and single and my mood kept swinging from elation to self-loathing depression.

I know I struggle with mental health now but it's only from triggers, like getting stressed with bullying at work and having to put up with noisy neighbours at home. But I still feel I handle it all better than I would have done if I was 21.

I know 13 isn't the only awkward age but do you remember being 13 and how awkward and clueless you were? It goes the same with all 13-year-olds but obviously it's even worse when you're ND on top of it.

Honestly I remember more about being fourteen than thirteen. I kept a diary when I was fourteen and I still have it but it's in a bad state. I've been considering rewriting it with annotations in a new notebook.

Reading it does make me cringe. You can tell I had a substantial amount of internalised misogyny. There's a fair bit of 'I'm better than other girls' and it hurts me to read it.

I have a whole graph laid out to explain the social hierarchy of my friendship group. It's very detailed. Clearly I put a lot of thought into my social standing at the time.

It's disturbing how negatively fourteen year old me talked about myself.

When I was 13, I was a very violent teen on a verge of burning out.

In which everything felt pointless, no one's giving me an explaination why, etc.
I was undiagnosed, internet wasn't available...

My reading comprehension was questionable (not that I'm aware of it at the time), questioning if all this chronic stress is "normal" despite everything outside myself is actually easy (academic wise, school routine wise, self care wise -- turns out puberty is already screwing with me since it started and chronic rhintis was utterly unmanageable and nobody is helping me at all), and still angry from childhood of still questioning why or what made me different from other kids.

Really, it's not like I've been "behind" any peers. It's not like I'm too scared -- I'm too reckless.

So reckless, I do not think I can survive being undiagnosed longer, without the "why am I different?" I never feared being "found out" because I never was interested in "being normal".
I hate "normal" and the people who acts and runs with the whole premise.

I still do not think of boyfriends and marriage; proud aroace here -- never felt like missing out because I do not envy pseudo-mature peers who ended up ruining their lives with whatever short term pleasure from peer pressure, and I still do.

The only wayd I've been missing out was because I couldn't afford stuff.
My household ain't that rich and it's not like I can earn for myself at that time.


I've been improving since 28, all because I tried messing around my hormones. Hormones that had been "naturally" messing with me since puberty.

If I hadn't gambled, or just delay the experimentation, all because of the idea that "I'm still too young" I'd probably start now instead of 2 years ago -- or, using psychiatric medications and on therapy for the wrong reasons.

The same stuff are still holding me back; being a biological female, and crappy finances.



Well, if only I can turn back time; treat the unmanageable sneezing crap before I became 6, have a competent therapist by age 8 and taken hormonal supplements by age 14, amongst other things that could've been fixed if it weren't for ignorance and financial limitations...

... My life, especially my adult life would've been very easy instead of going hyperindependent at age 6 or so and figure the whole thing myself for the last 20+ years of living in an unreliable world.

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I remember I got my first mobile phone at 13, but I didn't really use it much. I played the games it had on it but that was about it. Nobody at school wanted my number or anything, although not every kid had their own mobiles like they do now. Then I kinda lost interest in it, probably because I didn't really feel emotionally mature enough for my own mobile phone yet. But I got my second phone for my 15th birthday, and I was a lot more interested then.

For my 13th birthday I remember getting a piano-keyboard that I had asked for, and I was so happy with it.

13 was the age I started my periods, right at the end of the summer break when I was about to return back to school. And the period pains were so bad that I was sent home from school a few times. I've endured different pains at school in my life but never went home, so period pains must have been the worse pain I've ever experienced.

So yeah, 2003 wasn't my favourite year of my life.

13.75 I went from prep to public school. Was branded a weirdo because while all the other boys,in the dorm, were bragging about sex, I said I didn't know much. I went from becoming socially anxious to increasingly depressed to being admitted to a psych ward at the start of the term I should've taken my A levels. I am probably the most disliked teenager ever to go to that school.

most of 13 in '74
- funny that's also the 'first oil crisis, cozy times
so much going on,
- dad carrying on with another woman, we kids hoping for a divorce
- while the business also flailed for that time, we had to work lots in replacement of staff, eg the summer and every day after school
- we got so much latin classes that the late bicycle ride home was a race to stay ahead of the (former) bullies from the voc. schools ( translated it is Pre-vocational secondary education/ Basic vocational programme)

but most of all, laughing, there was so much to giggle and laugh about