Growing in to my 20-year-old mind
Teenagers will be teenagers, but I always wanted to skip that part.
By Cali Goertz

Sprawled out on the half of my queen-size bed that wasn’t covered in laundry, I reached over and slid my fingers to raise the volume on my CD player. Per usual one of my My Chemical Romance CD’s was in, and per usual my dad was yelling to turn it back down. I pretended I couldn’t hear him and looked around to my poster-covered walls and thought of how gloomy my life seemed.
Thinking back to that time I don’t believe I was being just another over dramatic teenager, my life really was dark. In High School no matter where I tried to fit in I pulled myself out. My sisters always said I was a 15-year-old stuck in a 20-year-old’s body. It eased my mind that things would get better after high school, but it didn’t make those years any easier.
Even though I feel like I had a good childhood, it was definitely different than most. I always wanted to be like my older sisters, typical I know. But they’re lives weren’t what a kid should want to imitate.
I have one younger sister and four older ones. My family is a bit of a “yours, mine, and ours” kind of story. My parents both had previous marriages which produced two children on each side. Then when they got married to each other, they had my little sister and me. Because of this our family experiences are different for each of us. My four older sisters are about ten years older than me. So when they were going through high school I was going through elementary school.
Many families have exteriors similar to mine, having stepsisters and half-sisters is becoming more normal. The US Bureau of Census found that 50% of US families are remarried or re-coupled and 1,300 new step families are forming every day. Though it’s obvious that even with a growing number of people living in the same family structures, family means something different to everyone.
“Our family went through a lot when the four older girls were in high school,” my mom Dee Goertz who raised all six of us girls said. “We started to fall apart for a bit.”
Half of them dealt with drugs, self-harm, depression, and mental issues while the other two attempted to deal with their problems in secret. My parents, despite fighting to raise 4 teenagers and two children, were the only solid pieces to our family. Our dad would call me his little bug and my younger sister miss rose. At the time though I think I connected more with my mom, surprisingly because I wanted to play sports like she did.
Even though my sister’s problems and my parent’s issues were their own, I was there witnessing it all as a young child. I think this caused me to become more mature and independent with my feelings, problems and overall personality. I didn’t want to get in the way and I didn’t want to be a part of a problem.

So as I grew up I dealt with things internally. Sketching, writing in diaries, running a blog on Tumblr. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was thinking or feeling. I tried to fake it till I made it. That is until I got to high school, and things bottled up to the point of overflowing.
See I had a boyfriend, the quarterback of a football team at a different school, and it made me feel like I was on top of the world. I had a best friend who I would spend weeks with. We shared everything. At school I had a decent group of friends I’d known since elementary school. My parents were proud of me and it was perfect.
That was until my boyfriend broke up with me for not wanting to do drugs or put out or all that stuff a 14-year-old shouldn’t even know about. I didn’t want to be like my sisters. Though things changed a couple months later when I found out him and my best friend had been texting about meeting up to smoke weed for the first time.
I decided to join them so I could beat the feeling I was getting left out, or left behind. Only days later we were caught by our parents. Somehow they were supportive of the idea of us trying it once; under the condition we would be safe and it wasn’t with my ex. I think they were tired of fighting teenage rebellion and scared that I would do it in secret and get hurt.
So I went with one of my older sisters, her boyfriend, and my best friend to Carkeek Park in Seattle, Wash. to smoke for the first time. Little did I know this was the start to a mud-covered snowball building up as it raced downhill… towards a cliff.
So many teenagers have had similar experiences. Peer pressure is something that is being seen in teenagers at younger and younger ages. In a recent study at the Keck School of Medicine in the University of Southern California they found that these habits begin in middle school and simply continue into high school.
“We think the reason may be that friends’ cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age,” said Yue Liao the director of the study noted in a press release. “During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence.”
Smoking became a regular part of my life. All my friends and I would meet up before school, during lunch and after school to get stoned. At night we would sneak out of our houses and get cross-faded at the rec center and then head to Denny’s when we got the munchies. This became our lives and it defined how we interacted with each other.
“I didn’t know what was happening behind the scenes, but looking back now they were very unhealthy friendships,” my little sister Anna Goertz said. “I think you kind of stuck with them because you were afraid to be alone.”
I grew distant from my family. Just like any teenager I thought they wouldn’t understand, they’d try to intervene, and be disappointed. I stopped getting along with my parents especially. At this point my older sisters had moved out. So it was me, my younger sister, and my parents.
It was always with my mom. We’d scream, yell, and charge at each other until one of us left the room. It got to the point where she kicked me out of the house for a couple days because every time we’d talk it’d end up in a fight. We didn’t talk for over a week even after those couple of days.


“You acted happy and bubbly the first couple years, then you shaved your head and dyed it dark brown,” Anna recalled. “You’re personality became more closed-off in high school.”
My friends and I became obsessive and almost competitive to see who could be the most self-destructive. My best friend went the hardest. Self-harm, anorexia to the point of passing-out in class, and taking drugs from random guys she met in a park. I hated watching it, I hated being a part of it. But if I wasn’t there, where would I go?
Finally, someone called the cops on my best friend out of fear she was going to kill herself. Her mom did an intense search of all of my best friend’s social media accounts, pictures and text messages. Everything that had been going on came to light. When her mom called us all crazy, threatened to involve the cops, and pulled my best friend out of our high school it all became real. I was like them, I was like my sisters.
Instantly I knew this had to stop. As scared as I was to lose my friends, I was terrified at the fact that I could have lost my best friend and that I was on the same track. I wanted something more for myself, but unfortunately my friends didn’t feel the same way.
They all thought that because I chose to stop with the drugs and the drinking that I thought they were bad influences and that I was better than them. So they ghosted me for three months. Three months of eating lunch in the school bathroom, explaining to my parents that I was choosing to stay home on a Friday night, and lots of smash-talk on social media.
We finally made up, but it was never the same after that. I began to do community college classes instead of high school ones so I didn’t have to be there anymore. I became very closed-off and began to care for myself like I was the only one in my life.
Because I was so distant from my friends, my family and I started to reconnect again. Having horrible friends at school isn’t so bad when you have a family welcoming you home every day. My mom and I began to go to the gym together and became “health buddies.” I never told her what had happened, but I think she could tell what was going on and knew I was sorry.
The more my friends left me out, the more my family stepped in. My parents everyday would say how proud they were of me, and my sister’s stepped in to save me when I didn’t even know I needed saving.
They threw me a surprise prom-not-prom when I didn’t have a date or friends to go to actual prom with. All of my sisters and their significant others planned out an entire day dedicated to me. They got me a dress, a manicure, a facial and a make-up artist to do my makeup. My date was my sister’s super awesome roommate, the Adam Jones. We all spent the whole night eating, playing mini-golf and Cards Against Humanity, and dancing to My Chemical Romance on a rooftop overlooking Ballard’s nightlife.

Just like my sister’s and unlike what I had planned, I found out that there’s more to life than the drama of high school. I began to look at myself, let go of all my high school drama, and push myself towards who I wanted to be.
“You were always the shy one,” my mom said. “Now that you have gone to university you’ve become a very goal oriented, self-minded, driven young lady I very much respect.”
So here I am three years later, my body has finally caught up with my 20-year-old mind. I have friends and family who love me no matter what I decide to do. I grew a passion for visual-journalism that’s kept me hopeful about my future. Most importantly I embarked on an ongoing adventure to love myself for who I am and what I stand for.
Word Count: 1,818
Dee Goertz — (206) 235–8492
Anna Goertz — (206) 288–3449
April 29, 2013 by Join Together Staff. “Peer Pressure to Smoke Greater in Middle School Than High School: Study.” Partnership for Drug-Free Kids — Where Families Find Answers. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July 2017.
“The Rise In Cyberbullying.” NPR. NPR, 30 Sept. 2010. Web. 25 July 2017.
“Stepfamily Statistics.” The Stepfamily Foundation Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 July 2017.
