I’m not the only one still clinging to my younger years, am I?

I think our teen years are where we make a lot of choices that have defined the person we are today, whether it be the bad ones that we’ve become stronger from, or the good ones that have brought us to where we are today, and whether they were good or bad, the past can’t be changed and we can only look forward.

Me, aged 15

Going forward, however, we tend to bring our best (or at least favourite) things from the past, and there are certain aspects of my teenage life that I have never grown out of while transitioning into my twenties. (Side note: I’ve never felt so old than just now referring to myself as ‘in my twenties’ WHAT)

Pop punk

From the time I discovered my love of bands like You Me At Six, All Time Low and Mayday Parade, I basically lived in my own music bubble of only listening to ‘alt’ stuff that the other girls in my class had never heard of. I had no idea who was in the charts or what was playing on the radio – all that mattered to me was keeping my iPod filled with the latest from Lostprophets and Paramore, because omg Hayley Williams, and while these days I’m a lot more varied in my taste, I still love crashing around to loud electric guitar rhythms.

Plugging in

On a similar note, as a teenager I was rarely found without at least one headphone in; every car journey, break time, I even went through a phase of sleeping with them in! To this day I struggle to get out of bed without putting music into my ears; its like my equivalent of coffee, and I love dancing around the house in the morning.

Blue eyeliner

While I look back at a lot of my makeup mistakes from my teen years – hello Dream Matte Mousse foundation in a shade much more orange than my face – the decision to start wearing blue eyeliner is one I love my younger self for. Ok, I might have overused it a bit at times, but its become my signature thing.

Mirror selfies

Seven years ago I was taking them on a little digital camera because phone camera quality was poor, and it would be me and my girlfriends crammed in front of a mirror in New Look or Primark. Nowadays, my iPhone sees a lot of bathroom mirrors, but many of the same faces.

Cheesy noughties teen movies

Yes I still occasionally binge on Princess Diaries and A Cinderella Story and no, I don’t really care if you think that’s sad..

Talking in emojis

Remember back in the old MSN days where you’d save so many damn emoticons that every sentence you typed would have an accidental weird sparkly thing in the middle of it? Well I still tend to use emojis in practically every conversation, but they’re a little less tacky these days.

Would I go back and re-live my teens? Probably not.. But I think I turned out alright, don’t you?

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