Since I have turned eighteen I have done a lot of reflecting of my past, and in that reflecting I have realized lessons that I have learned along the way that I wish I had known at thirteen. I wouldn't have had to struggle through learning them at fifteen or sixteen if I had already known them at thirteen.


So here are my top lessons I wish I had known at thirteen

1. Take time to rest

This is a lesson that I still haven't fulled learned if I am honest, but I am a lot better than I used to be. A lot of the time I push myself to the point of exhaustion, pain, and illness which isn't healthy. If you take the time to rest when you start to get tired or in pain then you won't push yourself to the point of illness, and you recover a lot quicker. And you will be able to do 3because you are doing better more of the time.

2. You deserve good things

Negative people in my life have told me time and time again I don't deserve good things and this message has stayed in my head and it is something I still struggle with from time to time. But you do deserve good things. You deserve that hot bath, you deserve that cup of tea, you deserve those fuzzy slippers, you deserve to feel good and be happy.

3. Your past doesn't define your present or your future

Everyone has at least one thing from their past that they don't want. But those things no matter how painful, no matter how dark, no matter how horrible do not define you in the present or in your future.

4. It's okay to cry!

For some reason society has this idea that crying means you are weak and that is far from true. Crying is releasing the painful toxins in your heart and soul and making room more beautiful things. The harder you cry the deeper the pain. Those feelings and hurts need to be released in order to make room in your soul.

5. Nobody is normal

For some reason I had (And kinda still have-- But I am working on it) this idea of what "normal" is and I wanted that so badly for myself. I felt so different from everybody else and that made me feel so unworthy of people's time or friendship. But in reality everybody has something that makes them not normal, so nobody is normal.

6. Self-care important

I have this habit of spending all of my time and energy on other people, leaving no time for myself. But this is not a healthy thing to do! Because, in my case anyway, if I am not taking time for self-care I begin to become self-destructive.

So taking time out for a hot bath, a good book, or even just a cup of tea is important-- it is necessary!

7. You are never alone in your struggles

This is somewhat of a normal thing for teenagers, they think they are the only people in the entire world going through what they are going through. But that is not true at all! Somebody, at some point, somewhere has gone through what you are struggling with.

8. Life is tough

Part of me already knew that life was tough, but things didn't seem as bad when I was younger. But as I got older things started getting tougher and my parents weren't there to help me as much. I was able to make my own mistakes and I had to deal with the consequences. It is tough, and it only gets tougher!

10.

9. There is more to life than being online

When I was younger it was so much easier for me to spend my life online. I didn't have to face things online, my problems weren't online, the people I wanted to avoid weren't online. You could make things your own online. But you also miss out on a lot of you spend all your time online. You miss conversations with friends, you miss seeing beautiful things, life just flashes by you because you are too busy looking at a screen.

10. You make your own dreams.

I spent way too much of my life letting other people tell me what my dreams should be, and it wasn't until I got older that I realized I could make my own dreams, I could have my own desires, I could have my own hopes! Other people do not control my dreams, because those are't my dreams those are other people's dreams for me