The peculiar school life of a teenage girl

oktober 18th 2025

I’ll be honest, till this day i do not really know how to make friends. But I think im slowly getting better at it.

Growing up in a small city with seniors double as much as children made friendships sometimes more forced than chosen. My first friends were neighbours, other kids in kindergarten or primary school, the way children usually make friends. Either this way or over parental friendships. With time then identity develops, likes and dislikes, desires, wishes and whatnot become clearer. I started reading very early, starting with little books together with parents at 5 years old and to this day i never really stopped, only my taste changes and varies from time to time and from season to season. Most of my old friends, and even recent friends, quite literally never read. That doesn’t make me dislike them but i figured books were always some kind of reality escape along art. I never really had anyone to talk to about the pictures i drew and the new book i declared my new favourite one. 

And while that one side of me always felt neglected, the other side was thrilled to jump with the others on trampolines and play hide and seek; later also going on parties and enjoying alcohol now and then. 

Overtime some extravert found my introverted self and adopted it. We became inseparable and finally someone had also fun doing art, talking about topics way too deep for our age. Until i destroyed that friendship by accident. As an insecure and big people pleaser I didn’t want to lose the friends that were basically my first ones, even if i was a bit more uncomfortable with them. I thought long friendships equal true and sincere ones. Surprise, they don’t. Almost a whole year I didn’t read, hadn’t a creative let out and didn’t even really had fun doing sport anymore (until i found a new sport that gave me passion again). And, another surprise, i felt horrible. 

Now almost one and a half to two years later, when i just turned 17 three weeks ago and started the 12th year of school, im wondering if I still want these friendships. I don’t really have a best friend at the moment but im thankful i found my way back to my old extroverted favorite person. I don’t hate this early friend group of mine but the only thing connecting us seems to be school, mutual people and this little suffocating place we live in. I don’t think id even be friends with them if I hadn’t grown up with them so close together. By now i would simply call it growing apart. 

I think if i was a bit older id be friends with some of my teachers even, my history one that has a philosophy degree, the philosophy one that has a biology degree, perhaps even my math teacher who’s (unromantically) way too much of an adorable nerd about maths and physics to teach unnerving, puberty-marked, confused little adults. Their jokes are funnier, at least for me, and their emotional intelligence is high enough for me not needing to justify why i like museums, deep talk and have a desire to know as much as i can. 

And this exactly puts me into a place where I don’t even know how to introduce myself for any other than my name. While i enjoy art, philosophy, culture and everything literally and physical media, i also seek to know about quantum physics, psychology, the human body’s biology and other STEM fields. My curiosity is so wide that, by now, I don’t even know what to not be curious about. Yet i still enjoy partying with friends until 3am while i wont get hyper-drunk, if that’s even a word. The complexity of it all somehow makes it hard to find people (this tiny city is probably part of the issue) with whom silence actually feels comfortable, and who don’t only talk about the latest trend on social media like its crucial for survival—perhaps for them it is. The more complex something or someone is, the harder it is to fit that being or thing into a box. Although fundamentally all humans are rather complex. 

Perhaps the only thing i can do right now is patiently moving with the flow of life while reconnecting and deepening the friendships I have which feel comfortable even in silence.

[If you enjoyed reading this let me know, however you like. Feel free to share any thoughts or advice in the comments and perhaps you’ll like other things of my stuff on here as well…https://open.substack.com/pub/raspberriedarling/p/the-peculiar-school-life-of-a-teenage?r=54td53&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web]