Per Aspera Ad Astra

Hey! 👋

My second blog post — I can hardly believe it! 🙈

Let me ask you a question:

Did you ever feel as a teenager, that the world was changing faster than you could keep up? That sometimes you just wanted to fly away somewhere where you didn’t have to prove anything or please anyone?

I did.
And that’s exactly the time in my life I want to talk about today.

I can’t remember the exact day I stopped feeling like a child.
But I remember the feeling — a mix of freedom and pressure.
Teenage years stormed in, slamming doors and shaking my soul.
I wasn’t little anymore, but I wasn’t ready to be grown either.

The inner world that once felt safe turned stormy.
Emotions became louder than words.
Some days I was full of life, laughter and courage.
Other days I just wanted to disappear — no explanations needed.
I was always moving: in sports, exploring, searching… not just places, but myself.

I was drawn to everything different.
I didn’t want to fit in.
I wanted to shine but not in someone else’s light, in my own.
Yet the more I tried to be myself, the more I saw how others looked at me differently.

School wasn’t hard because of the lessons — it was hard because of the looks.
Not the assignments, but the comparisons.
The remarks that weren’t loud, but cut deep like whispers:

“You could be prettier if you just tried a little harder.”
“You really didn’t know that?”

They weren’t screams.
They were slow, steady scratches to the soul.

In the classroom, I felt like I was on stage.
Everyone had a role — the joker, the golden girl, the leader.
But who was I?
When I spoke, I wasn’t heard.
When I stayed silent, I wasn’t seen.

I wanted to belong — but not at the cost of losing myself.

It was around that time that smoking entered my life.
Not to be “cool,” but to quiet something inside.
It matched the restless, buzzing state I was in.
Sports, which had once been my joy, started to feel like a burden.
My breath grew shorter, my body heavier.
But I didn’t yet realize just how much I was suppressing inside.

But life gave me a gift — a best friend.
Our families met, and the moment we started talking, I felt: she’s my person.
We didn’t have to say much — we understood each other even in silence.
With her, I felt true trust.
That friendship lasted nearly a decade, and even though life later pulled us apart, that connection will always be a part of me.

At some point, I began writing in secret.
Writing became my safe space.
A place where I didn’t have to be anyone else’s version of me.
A place where I could just be… me.

And there, in the quiet and the struggle, I slowly began to grow.
No one gave me a manual for how to be “right,”
but every step I took toward my own truth made me stronger.

“The chaos that drained others was my growing ground.
That’s where my first dreams and my strength were born.”

“Some lessons come through pain — but from that grows the most genuine strength.”

Everyone has their own teenage story —
some remember wild freedom, others recall a quiet fight within.

What was your teenagehood like? Did you feel like you belonged, or mostly alone?

Share your thoughts in the comments —
or just leave a 💛 if you found a piece of yourself in this story.