Today is my 13th birthday, normally birthdays are times of fun and happiness, or at least that's how I've felt throughout my life, but this time… it's the one where my childhood will pretty much be over.

I have this idea where it will be over when I turn 13 and when I enter highschool, I don’t want it to be over because I'm not responsible enough to be an adult. I know this from experience and it sucks.

You may be saying to yourself “don’t worry Elp! You're still young and stuff!” but what i've realised is that society goes way too quickly after 13. 13 is the year that everything goes downhill (or as society would think, uphill). For example look at the way they would treat an 8 year old and a 10 year old, it would be pretty much the same! Both are children to their eyes! As well as a 10 to 12 year old. But now compare that to a 14 and 16 year old… Do you see what I mean? One is a teen, the other is a young adult. It's unfair how quickly they want us to adapt. And just because everyone has to go through it does not make it okay. You're all older than me, you know exactly what I mean. This world is a place that rewards stress and burnout. Greed is one of the biggest things in the world right now, everyone does everything solely for money. Did you hear what happened to the creator of squid game? Their teeth started falling out from stress, and yet nobody seemed to really care. And guess what? They're rich now, but was it really worth it? I'm the type of person who tries their absolute best to avoid stress and I don’t know. I think this is all just getting to my head.

I feel like I'm more emotionally aware than most, maybe it's just me, but I can basically just know things without people telling me, like all of you for example, you're all dealing with a lot and I mean a LOT. Most of you bottle it up. I'm not going to hit you with a “stop bottling your emotions”, it's sometimes good for you, like you shouldn't just start crying in public, but sometimes, anytime you can, just let go, it's fine. It's actually theorized that bottling up tears can lead up to cancer so yeah.

Whenever I try to talk to an adult about this, about how i'm scared of change, how i'm scared of being incompetent, they always give me the same “advice” which is something along the lines of “change happens to everyone, sometimes bad things happen and we have to get used to it”. Now, I don't hate them for this, they're trying to help in their own clumsy little ways and I can kinda appreciate it, but is reminding me what I'm afraid of really the best way you could’ve done it? This is exactly my point, we’re all suffering and yet we don’t say anything because nobody ever says anything, we all either try to be jerks or formal nowadays and it sucks, it's horrible, and yet I can’t do anything about it, I'm just a 13 year old child. We’d need at least a country's worth of people to actually do… something about it.

I think I feel less happy than I once did before, I think it's because I have to live with the idea that I'm going to technically be legally allowed to drive in 3 years, it's just too quick all of a sudden.

You don’t need to say anything, you’ve all been through this and I've already submitted myself and I've accepted that this will happen. I really just needed to let that out of my chest. All I need to know is if you took the time to read me ramble about this, if so… Thank you.

I hold grid paint close to my heart.