It Would Be So Much Better If Puberty Wasn’t Soul-Destroying
Puberty is cruelty-equivalent to teaching a child to swim by chucking them into the deep end of the swimming pool and leaving them to it, then saying that it was ‘character building’.
It’s simple: if you had a smooth childhood, then you haven’t been through puberty.
Only recently turning 20 has made me realise that puberty for me is definitely over and I’m stuck like this forever. No more changes for me. Well, expect for the slow decaying journey to old age. Though, before I start to fall into the abys of sagging, grey hairs, and prime cat-lady years, this ‘in-between’ must be the prime of my ‘looks’. Fantastic.
Puberty was foul, smelly, painful, and far too humiliating… So let’s purposely delve back down that rabbit hole and reawaken those crippling memories you thought you’d buried deep inside, because, well, it will make us appreciate how non-awful our lives are now… right?
Through the process of Neville Longbottoming into a beautiful, modelling-career-worthy human being, it, like every good thing in life, came with costs.
1) Growing Pains
The growing pains were excruciating at times. The achy arms and legs just made the thought of walking around school with heavy bags all the worse. Also, plus that with the added aches and pains of it being your certain time of the month… It was fun.
I was waiting for my growth spirt for years until I realised, this year actually, that it wasn’t coming. But that didn’t stop me, like everyone else, from looking like a lanky puppy. I’m not exactly small, I know. Though, I’m not exactly tall either. I’m average. How boring. I wanted to be one or the other. I wanted to be a cute hobbit or a graceful elf, not an awkward orc.
I think I’m mostly bitter for not beating my sister in height, like I’d always threatened. I am nowhere near, and that genuinely upsets me. There’s a certain question of character you have when a taller person leans on your head with a smirk, where you feel on the brink of dropping all of your goodly duties and becoming a super villain to purge the world of all its happiness. But then they lift off and you pretend to laugh and the world is brighter again — though, that Gollum part of you still exists, no matter how fair you bury him.
2) Spots
Hi. Welcome to my particular Hell.
I never suffered with acne as much as others did. Though, at the time I thought I did. A full-fringe and a slight goatee of acne was all I had. Others weren’t as lucky.
What kind of abomination is acne, anyway? Bruised red bumps that you can squeeze? No thanks. It’s bloody vile. And blackheads. What the hell?
Going to the doctor was pointless. No matter the amount of pills, creams, and washes I tried, they never went. I felt (and still feel) that I had (and have) tried everything. Of course, the doctor said how pointless it was as it was just because of my age and they ‘will be gone when you’re older.’
Oh, how I want to shove my 20-year-old spotty skin in his face.
Spots are apparently only a teenage problem. It’s probably why people think I’m 12. What bollocks.
3) Sex Ed.
Ah, yes. If you thought you weren’t suffering enough, you then had to learn about what was actually happening to you.
My first taste of sex education was in Year 4, where we watched a video of a cat giving birth. Almost throwing up didn’t bode well for the next year, where we watched a human woman giving birth, baby-head on. The next year, we actually learned what sex was through the visual aid of two cartoons going at it, then we watched in (even more) horror as they were cut in half and we zoomed in to see what was going on inside. Scarred.
As we got older, the classes grew into ways to scare us into celibacy. Some teachers really pulled out all the stops. One teacher showed us a slideshow of all the STDs you can get. With photos. Graphic photos. This tactic provoked varied reactions. The jokers were stunned into silence. Others had to sniff away tears. One girl had to run to the toilets to throw up. I thought I had dealt with it quite maturely, until my friend told me that I stared into space for a few minutes after, numb, cold, and dead to the world — the same face I own when facing the realty that Game of Thrones will eventually have to end.
If these images weren’t enough to scare me into pursuing a spinster life, the stories of different pregnancy dangers, birthing dangers, and the aftermath of birth made you wonder if giving birth to a ‘little miracle’ was truly worth it. She ended the class by showing us an episode of Sixteen and Pregnant. I feel she would have succeeded with this alone if she had shown this first.
For a while after this particular class, my career choice was to be a nun. The only problem, of course, was that I didn’t believe in God, so that would have been a failed marriage from the start.
I’m not sure what was worse: having separate gender classes, mixed classes, or watching some teachers flounder at the front of the class over the uncomfortable responsibility. I also don’t know what was worse for me: having to fit a condom on a wooden penis or having the whole class look at me when the guy next to me asked ‘anything to share, Becky?’ after the teacher said how it’s the quiet ones who have probably done the things the boasting ones boast about.
It’s necessary — extremely necessary — and, for the most part, if you minus the mentally scarring aspects, it’s educational. I found out that ‘orgasm’ and ‘organism’ are two entirely different things (with the aid of my science teacher in a biology lesson, not sex education), and that’s all that matters. I think I blacked out through everything else.
4) The ‘Woman-ing’
Need I say anything? It’s a curse.
5) Boy… Things
Of course, I don’t have much to say on this.
Though, once in class, a guy’s voice broke as he was answering a question. It was hilarious. Not for him, mind. But if people can laugh at my misfortune it’s only fair that I laugh at others’.
6) Hormones
These bastards are what you should blame for our years of PURE HELL. They attacked everything. Still do (thanks, Womanhood). But being a teenager, smelling and looking as though you bathed in chip oil, didn’t bode well for popularity.
There was nothing hormones didn’t critique.
‘That hair isn’t greasy enough.’
‘Your hips are too small. Let’s widen them.’
‘You’re not lanky enough. Let’s stretch you out more.’
‘Oh! Time of the month! Let’s stab your gut repeatedly and ruin your underwear.’
‘Let’s make you stand out by making you reek of B.O. that only others will smell.’
‘Spots? What spots? Let’s give you more until you glow in the dark.’
And let’s not forget the tears. Oh, so many tears.
Once, in GCSE Art, I spent the whole lesson doing nothing. While my friends were ‘arting about’, I had nothing in front of me. I just stared at nothing. Only when my teacher sat by me and asked why I wasn’t doing anything did I burst into tears and say, through ugly sobs, ‘I DON’T KNOW!’
It’s not one of my finest moments.
7) Photographic Evidence
A problem with my generation, and every generation to follow, is how we now have technology where proof of our most vulnerable and embarrassing stage can be 1) shared online and 2) never be deleted.
The pre-puberty years before the curse of social media were bliss. The only photo albums you had were the dusty ones buried in the family bookcase, and even then they were filled with expertly picked photos that didn’t bring dishonour on the family — and the only ones to ever see them would be family members and, God forbid, future partners.
But that’s fine. Photos can be burned. But the Cloud can’t.
With all of the documented embarrassment scouring the internet for all eternity, you can only hope and pray that you look somewhat entirely different — and hopefully better — than the puberty evidence. Even if there hasn’t been a drastic change, the old, awful photos (and they are awful) should be enough to trick people into thinking how gorgeous you are in comparison. Every cloud, huh?
What mistakes did humanity make for us to be punished with the trials of puberty?
What makes it all worse is that the majority of kids nowadays look older than me, and seem to leave school with even more confidence than they went in with five years’ previous. Any confidence I had in school had reached far below minus by the time I left. Where their suffering is, I will never know.
I feel like some of the kids leave school with one of those t-shirts, saying:
‘I went through puberty, and all I got was a fashion sense, amazing hair, an eye for make-up, popularity, an attitude, a lost virginity, confidence, and no insecurities.’
Whereas, I only left with:
‘I went through puberty, and all I got were boobs and humiliation.’
