There's No Right Time

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High school, and even college can be kind of challenging at times cause they are years of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental growth. Everyone’s maturing and developing aka puberty, and this doesn't all occur at the same time.

The public school system puts an incredible amount of pressure on teenagers to grow up, to be mature before they are actually there and ready yet. I took my cousin to her freshman material pickup earlier in the summer, and I was floored to see these 9^th grade girls. In comparison my little cousin is a 5^th grader, she’s the same age as all of them but man…she doesn’t look it. These girls wear tons of makeup, and are wearing crop tops and booty-hanging-out Hollister shorts and it all just felt so wrong.

I stood there watching these girls interact, and wondered if that was the most natural thing to them. Being 14 caked with makeup, and in revealing clothes. Now I’m not trying to shame anybody who chooses to do this, but I do thing there’s something wrong when you’re THAT young and doing it. I’m 19 years old, if I want to wear a bra top out to a party, I’m confident in myself and my body and me doing it isn’t for anybody else. I find with the young teens all of this is done to APPEAR older, to APPEAR mature.  These girls are just faking it, they have no idea what it is they are doing. They’re just trying to look grown, before they’ve grown. The problem arises when they become popular.

Now they have a spotlight. They are the ones the boys talk to, the ones the other girls start to envy. They blossomed a few years before everyone else. They’ve got the senior boys attention. The problem arises when my little cousin who isn’t into makeup, and dating, and wearing those types of clothes sees this on the daily. You begin to equate that as where you SHOULD be. You should want to do those things, you should be into those things. There is no right time to mature though. I don’t think many of those girls are confident in themselves at 14, but they put a different facade onto their bodies. That image can be extremely confusing when you’re that young.

Everyone matures and grows in their own way. If you’re young and you haven’t got it figured out yet, that’s okay. You don’t need to be dating boys, or even like boys. You don’t need to wear short dresses to the school dance if you are not comfortable. You don’t need to steal your mom’s makeup and start testing stuff on your face. You’re supposed to feel a bit awkward. I know that doesn’t help but, we’ve all been there, we’ve all felt like a fish out of water in our own skin. Your body is transforming and everything is going to feel weird and awkward because you’re not in the same skin.

Whether it’s middle school, high school, or college just because something is the norm doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do. If you don’t want to drink, then you don’t have to. If people start pressuring you, leave. What you do shouldn’t affect them. If you’re not big on dating or hooking up, then don’t. You don’t have to put on like you’re somebody else to make other people feel comfortable. The only person who needs to be made comfortable is yourself.

You don’t need to blossom in high school, you don’t need to blossom in college. You want to blossom in your 20s, your 30s. You want to blossom whenever you chose to blossom, there shouldn’t even be an age requirement. When you’re ready you’ll enter your renaissance. When you know who you are, you’re confident in who you are, when you’re not so affected with what everyone else is doing, and you’ve got that self-love. Don’t let people, society decide things for you. 

I really liked what she had to say, and she's a great example of growing at your own pace