1995

I had a weird dream last night – nothing special really (i.e. no Twin Peaks crazy shit) but just a strange one.

Not going to go to details but basically it was thanks to me reading my diary from 1995.

I was 15 back then and my life was all about boys.

Every day I was so in love and the next day I was looking for a reason to live because I was so broken. I was desperately trying to get every single guy like me (or love me as I wrote it), it was actually a bit disturbing to read. I was a messed up teenage girl, I really was.

What also was strikingly obvious that I hardly ever wrote anything about how life in general was going. I didn’t write about my home or my family almost at all. The few occasions I mentioned something I said something about my parents always fighting and how afraid it made me. On one occasion I wrote that I was annoyed that some “guy” came with us to a trip again and I assume this was referring to the countless men that my mother was seeing (even though she was married to my dad). I know I was not allowed to write anything about my mother’s affairs because my dad once read my diary and used it against my mom in one of their fights. Obviously that then turned out to be my fault… how dare I write something private in my diary, right?

One thing that really shone from all the pages was how utterly alone I was with my feelings.

Unless they read my diary, my family knew nothing about my life. To be honest I don’t remember ever sharing any secrets with my mom or even with my sister.

I really didn’t like my sister when I was a teenager. She was my mom’s puppet. She turned 18 while still living at home and apparently (According to my diary), my mom and her used to go out occasionally for a drink together. I always felt that she was the center of the attention and I was left alone to do my own thing – no one was interested in what I was thinking or feeling.

So now looking back at it all, it was no surprise that I was trying to make every guy fall in love with me. At least then they were interested in my life, even if it was for a brief moment and for all the wrong reasons.

It was also a bit worrying that I lost my virginity to a lot older man at the age of 12 or 13 (He was probably 30!) for the same reason. If anyone knew, they would give it labels like pedophilia, rape… The guy would have been put away for a long time if I had taken him to the police. I don’t remember much about it (after all it was over 20 years ago) and no one ever knew, I never told my mother or my big sister – the people that should have been there for me.

I think that incident probably initiated the down spiral of self-destruction that I went through while growing up. I was simply a broken human being at the age of 15.

Now I am 34 and in a very good place with everything. I am balanced, I have a career and a partner that makes me laugh every single day and for the right reasons. My sister is one of my best friends and I even like my mom (regardless of her never being there for me and still being extremely self-centered).

I don’t have any kids of my own, but hopefully I will do in couple of years.

I really hope and pray that I will be in a good place with myself when they turn 15 so I can be there for them in the ups and especially downs of their life.

So I always try to find some teaching in everything I write… and today it is not very hard to find (in fact I could probably write a book about it).

This is for all the parents (new, old, future) out there and basically anyone who spends time with teenage kids. They really are just that, KIDS. A teenage girl growing up in today’s world is a horrifying experience and can leave you scarred for life. In my case I got raped by a grown man when I was only a little girl and I kept quiet about it because he told me that it was “our little secret”. Still today that puts shivers through me to just think about it and I do not want any other girl to go through that (but I know this is happening every day!).

When kids are very young they love playing games and spending time with their friends in hobbies etc. For a parent these really are the ‘easy times’ because you don’t have to worry too much about the kid hurting their soul so to speak. When they become teenagers, they get given a body of an adult and a very curious mind. They want to feel needed and wanted but can't really understand what it all means.

I personally was a very private kid (still am actually) and to get through to me, my parents would have had to climb a mountain or two. But - they really should have done it because that is what it takes to be a parent.

I am fine now. I re-built my life little by little by basically getting as far away as I could from what my life used to be and start over, but no one should have to do that - especially a child.

Lets see how my kids will turn out, I actually can't wait to have some proper mother to daughter talks with my teenage girls ;)