How I Figured Out My Weird Teenager Vibes
So yeah, this whole “adult acting like an angsty teen” thing hit me like a brick last Tuesday. My partner asked if I wanted pizza – totally normal, right? But suddenly, I felt this massive wave of annoyance bubble up. Like, why couldn’t they just know I wanted tacos? I almost rolled my eyes. Seriously? I’m a grown-ass adult. That reaction was pure 15-year-old me.
It freaked me out enough that I decided to actually dig into it. Not just think about it, but do something. Grabbed my dusty old journal from the back of the closet. The one with the terrible band stickers plastered all over it. Sat down at the kitchen table, coffee going cold, and just started flipping pages. Wow. Cringe city. Pages full of messy handwriting about feeling misunderstood, stupid crushes, hating school, thinking nobody “got” me.
Then I did something kinda dumb, but it worked. I found a picture of myself at 16. Awkward smile, bad haircut, trying way too hard to look cool in a band tee. I taped that sucker right onto my bathroom mirror. Every morning, brushing my teeth, there was teenage me staring back. It was weirdly intense. Started talking to him, just in my head at first. Like, “Dude, what was really going on there?”
Here’s the messy part where I actually tried stuff:
- Re-read specific journal entries about fights with my parents. Felt that old anger rise up again, hot and sharp.
- Tried to remember what I needed back then in those moments. Wasn’t about winning the argument, mostly just wanting to feel heard, you know?
- Noticed physical reactions when remembering certain things. That pit in my stomach seeing the journal entry about failing a math test? Still there.
- Wrote a letter to my 16-year-old self from now-me. Didn’t sugarcoat it. Just apologized for not understanding him better back then, acknowledged how tough some of it felt.
Doing all this wasn’t comfortable. Felt kinda stupid sometimes. Why am I talking to a picture? But then, something shifted. That weird pizza annoyance? I realized it wasn’t about tacos. It was that same old feeling from age 16 – feeling like my preferences didn’t matter, like I wasn’t being “seen.” My partner wasn’t my dismissive high school teacher, but my brain kinda put them in that role for a second.
The big lightbulb moment? It’s not about becoming a teenager again. It’s about that kid’s old wounds getting poked. When I feel that surge of unreasonable anger or want to sulk, it’s often because something now is accidentally stepping on a landmine buried back then. Understanding that kid’s fears and hurts – the feeling invisible, the not being good enough, the helplessness – suddenly made my own overreactions make way more sense. It’s not an excuse to act like a jerk, but damn, it explains why the jerk wants to come out sometimes. Now, when I feel that surge, I can pause and think, “Okay, which old wound just got nudged?” Makes dealing with the actual now problem way easier. Teenage me wasn’t just being difficult; he was trying to cope with stuff he didn’t have the tools for. My job now is to finally give him a bit of that understanding he craved.
