I am reading I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou, it is the scene near the end of the book where Maya becomes disheartened with going to school because of all she has seen of the world. She has become “aware”, while her classmates remain “unaware”. I read silently, absorbing it all: “they concentrated great interest on who was worthy of being student body president, and when the metal bands would be removed from their teeth, while I remembered sleeping for a month in a wrecked automobile and conducting a streetcar in the uneven hours of the morning.” I pause. Then I happen upon it, that sentence. “I knew I knew very little but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn’t be taught to me at George Washington High School.” Something inside of me sounds the alarm. I don’t know why but I immediately feel called out. It’s as if she has exposed me and I am left there half naked on the sidewalk.

The first time I thought about my future I was in college. I wanted to apply for a year abroad and the process demanded that I have declared my major. Discouraged by my parents of pursuing Philosophy or English Literature, the fields I was naturally drawn to (because of what they presumed to be a lack of jobs in the market) I ended up declaring Political Science, one of the few courses I had fulfilled the prerequisites for. Before that point I had never really asked myself what I wanted to be in the world. I just coasted by from one thing to another, in a pre-set path that my parents and the society had outlined for me. I didn’t see it as a shortcoming or some kind of laziness on my part, I was just unaware. Unlike Maya, I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I just…didn’t know.  

For the longest time after that, my biggest regret was not pursuing my studies abroad. I saw it as a failure of my teenage self that I had not pushed myself enough to find and go after something I was passionate about and begun to forge my independence. But how do you blame the ignorant? At the time I wasn’t aware of what life-changing paths my friends had embarked on by leaving the country. I wasn’t aware of what I was missing out on.

Each one of us remembers his/her teen years differently. Some don’t even remember them. As my friend Nour just proclaimed to me: “You shouldn’t think too much about your teens as teens, because you will forget them.” Is it then a failure on my part that I have never forgotten them? My teen years have always stayed with me as this shadow of what I could have been. When you’re a teenager you think you have the whole world figured out. You are beginning to become aware of the space you take up and what it means for you to be a human and it feels exhilarating. Many firsts happen as a teenager. First kisses, first loves, first time traveling on your own, first prizes for achievement…etc. The romantic in me looks back on this time as when we first started to build our character and I wonder if that resonates. What do your teens mean to you?

A few years ago (more like 5 than a few, but whatevs) my little brother graduated from High School. We went to his graduation commencement, a lavish affair in his school’s garden, and it was very touching. Halfway through the speeches I found myself crying. The professor was going on about the fresh start that they would be embarking on and the seeds they would sow, and I couldn’t stop myself from bawling my eyes out. It wasn’t because I was particularly touched for my brother, but because I felt like I had missed out on something big. I was envious of where they were in life and the years still ahead of them, years I felt that I had wasted doing nothing. Towards the end of his speech I managed to get myself together, but the whole episode served as a sincere wake up call to evaluate what I was doing with my life.

My teen years were characterized by daydreaming. I remember sitting in class and fantasizing about how my crush would come and ask for a private word with me, how we would become friends and then start dating and live happily ever after. For many people teen years meant experimentation. Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs…High School was the time to try new things and test your limits. Often, the “cool” or “popular” people were those ahead of the others, dabbling in different substances. One of my best friends recalls how being bad was glorified ““It wasn’t cool or particularly encouraged to do well in school or respect your parents or have alternative hobbies and interests outside the next khoruga”. Personally, at my school, it was less about being bad and more about excelling. “Cool” was being able to do well in school while also managing to be “bad”. I guess that’s the German school system for you. Always looking for achievement.

My most pronounced High School memories were picking out outfits to wear to events on the phone with my best friend. I remember how every birthday, school function or fitar Ramadan was a big deal, because it was where we would intermingle with our peers and often, our crushes. I remember the first time my crush came to a Ramadan fitar with his new girlfriend. I was gutted and spent the whole night overanalyzing their every move. How they would hold hands. How he took her chair out for her before fitar. How they sat together on the sofa. Everything felt intense as a teenager. Sadness was depression. Happiness was ecstasy. Confusion was bewilderment. All feelings were ^10. I was a big emo music fan and spent half my time listening to lyrics that I felt embodied my experience as a teenager (I can still sing every lyric on Yellowcard’s Ocean Avenue).

One of my most most vibrant memories of teen years was when I got my period. I was technically still 12 but then my period went missing for a whole year, so it ushered in my teenage years. At our school there was weird shame associated with getting your period. The polite girls didn’t talk about it, and the ones that had gotten it (and were vocal about it) were deemed as “fast” or “say3een”. Puberty in general was a big part of the teens. Our schoolteachers used to call us “ihr pubertierenden Monster” and I recall years when we made fun of the boys for having “shanab el e3dadeya”. I think I have never spent more time doing anything than I did googling home cures for acne. Clearasil, tea tree oil and homemade egg masks, that is my teens in a nutshell.

As a teenager anyone who was “different” was shunned aside and made fun of, you conformed or you were excluded. At our school the cliques were less obvious, but I can remember around 10^th grade when I started to become friendlier with the “popular” kids, they were such a solid group it didn’t leave much room for individuality. You had to adopt group think or fall from the circle. Personally, I was always a bit weird in school. I preferred books over people and did not speak much unless spoken to. My “head was in the clouds” you could say and I spent half my time thinking of Harry Potter (the series not the character). And yet even though the teens were such an awkward phase, they were also a time of innocence. I remember— when boys and girls just started going out together—how we would stand outside the school doors every Thursday and decide on our plans for the big Thursday hang out. Would it be cinema (often Bandar and bowling) or Chillies? Or the club? (note to self: what even was the nady?) Being a teen meant things went from 0-100 in a minute and everything had the capacity to completely alter your life. Talking to the new guy in class= your latest crush. Going out past curfew= trouble with your parents, getting a bad grade= misery. I would give a lot to go back to the days when my biggest worry was what the cool kids thought of me (not really, that was a tough time).

Today I don’t interact with a lot of teens, so I don’t know what has changed. I imagine that the advent of technology and social media has made it much harder to be “in” or “cool”. The competition is now not just those people that go to school with you, but every kid in the world. Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. To be plugged in today is to be on top of everything. The latest Tik Tok trend. Your favourite celebrity’s look. That new show that just aired. My little cousin has an entire Instagram account dedicated to her love of Stranger Things, and it’s a mystery to me how she manages to update it, her own account, her Tik Tok, and also finish her homework.

I guess the most poignant thing about the teen years that I could say is this: they happened, they’re over. No, honestly I would give a lot for that wholesome sense of friendship and love that I experienced in my teen years, but I guess we have to move on at some point.

 What were your teen years like?

Do you find yourself nostalgic for the days of braces and glasses?

Do you think you’ve moved on from this phase?

Yours in adolescence (and always),

Girl With One Earring