Recently I've been looking around wondering how things became the way they are. Your teenage years are supposed to be some of the most fun times of your life before you really have to grow up. So why is it so hard?

Chances are if you're like me, you're looking at your life wondering why everything has to be a challenge. It seems like life is constantly an obstacle course for even the smallest things and nothing is going the way you'd like it to.

Now, I'm not saying life is perfect or that I expect it to be.

Life is full of ups and downs, I've learned to accept when I'm at a low point because I know something great will be coming. You grow and excel from some of the more painful parts of your life than the great ones, in my opinion. I've become more wise in my short 19 years than I thought I would at this point because of what I've gone through.

I've learned to grow thicker skin, stick up for myself, and handle my own. But nonetheless I am tired and worn down. Each week brings a new battle and continues ongoing battles. When will it finally stop?

If you're like me, you wear your heart on your sleeve. Can I have a shoutout to my fellow Taurus'? I feel everything so deeply. I voice my opinion. I have a hard time letting things go. So when the whole world feels like it's against me, I'm weighed down.

I don't feel appreciated.

Have you ever been somewhere and knew that if you weren't there, it wouldn't make a difference? Your presence doesn't matter to the people you're with whether you're there or not? No matter where I go I feel this way. I just can't seem to fit in. Is it me? Is it my personality? Am I too uptight? Too old? Too young? Am I isolating myself? These questions run freely through my mind constantly. I just can't fit in.

I have very few true friends.

I can count the number of people I call friends on one hand. I constantly feel like I'm recycling through people I trusted. The number gets smaller and smaller. People change and adapt, some into the people they said they would never become. I understand growing up, but why am I always chasing after people? When will someone chase after me? I always feel like I'm putting in the most effort.

I'm very thankful for my true friends that I can count on, as well as my family. I don't know what I would do without you. But I don't want to find out. I'm just grateful I am able to reside my trust in you and share a relationship with you.

I try new things and it doesn't work out.

I don't know how many new skills I've tried to pick up in order to gain new friends. Or even just to spend some quality time with myself. I've tried different clubs at college, sat in a different spot in class hoping the person next to me would keep a conversation flowing before class, gone to the gym.. It just doesn't seem like anything I do works for me. Right idea, wrong timing? I hope that's the case.

Teenage years are the weirdest.

Everyone is trying to figure themselves out, experiment, and fit in. I don't know if I really want to fit in, because then I'd be like everyone else. But it'd be nice to be wanted, appreciated, missed.

I'm assuming that I can't be the only one that feels like the universe is against them for a period of time. I do genuinely try to put good out into the world. I've been making a very conscious effort to see the positive in things and keep moving one day at a time. Even THAT has been biting me in the butt recently!! But I do know karma makes a full circle. Pain is temporary.

The sun will rise again.

With my whole positive out look on things, I know that the sun will rise again. I will be okay. Because at this point in my life, I've come this far to know I will be fine.

I have a tattoo of a flower, representing the quote, "Flowers grow back after being stepped on. So will I."

I will grow past this. And so will you, reader.