16 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was 16

1. People won’t treat you differently if you don’t wear makeup.

2. Your parents are human too. They will make mistakes and you should forgive them just as you would expect them to forgive you.

3. You will never feel like you tell the people you love how much you love them enough. Tell them anyway.

4. You’ll never go where you want to go if you wait for somebody to come with. Sometimes you have to go it alone and that’s okay.

5. People will tell you they understand what you’re going through but some will say it out of sympathy instead of honesty.

6. There are terrible things happening in the world even if they are not happening to you. Don’t believe the people trying to tell you that it can’t get any better than it is now.

7. The people who you think are cute won’t matter in a few years. Their opinions will matter even less.

8. Risks are fun and exciting, but they’re better with friends you trust.

9. You will change a lot after high school, but if you’re not okay with who you’re becoming, you will always have the ability to become someone else.

10. There is no reason to worry about your virginity. Your friends aren’t “losing” anything, and neither will you.

11. The people telling you that you shouldn’t romanticize cities are people you should be ignoring. In a few years you will go to the city and learn that it’s everything you’ve always wanted.

12. If you feel uncomfortable about anything, you don’t need to come up with excuses to avoid it. Trust yourself. No one know’s what’s going on inside of you more than you do.

13. No one will ask you what grade you got on that algebra test.

14. Cheating is only cheating yourself, but if you spent all of your time studying for other classes, cheat on that Spanish test so you don’t have to take three quarters of French in college.

15. You don’t have to laugh if you don’t think it’s funny. No matter how attractive or popular or cool they are.

16. No one ever talks about the nights they went to bed early, but it feels so much better to wake up refreshed. These years don’t have to be the years you talk about forever.