Stop telling teens they are in ‘the best years of their lives’: it normally sucks

I’ll be honest, I hated being a teenager

I was bad at being 14. Or indeed, 15, or 16. I’ve always been an ‘old soul’ and I’ve always struggled to relate to youth culture, which as you can imagine made me a stranger among my peers. I liked Jane Eyre, begged my Mama to take me to Haworth, Wimpole Hall, and Whitby Abbey, and wore blazers and cardigans outside of school. I preferred Paul Anka, Verdi, and Al Stewart to Justin Bieber and Harry Styles. I pretended I was a romantic heroine whenever I did my chores, and daydreamed about being a Victorian. My ‘big crush’ was Bill Nighy, which I wasn’t ever going to confess to.

I didn’t really like watching TV so I never knew what series were being discussed, I thought it was childish to mess around in class, and I’d have picked the peace of the school library over the playground any day. Stuck up, haughty, quiet, isolated, and honestly? In interests and personality I was about 20 years older than the body I was stuck in, with all the hormones, anger, and naivety of a kid. I was nothing like the people I was growing up with. It was hell.

Who are you, really, and how much did you have to hide?

“Mads, do you like JLS?” a girl asked me suddenly after maths, smirking. Fuck. A trap. This could be something completely made up, and I had no idea if they…