Thirteen

[shadesong]

Here's what Adam and I are giving Elayna for her thirteenth birthday on Saturday - a custom necklace by kythryne, with thirteen leaves and thirteen flowers.

Thirteen is a big birthday. A big year. A big change.

So tell Elayna - what was thirteen like for you?

Comments to this post will be presented to Elayna bound in the best format I can manage on short notice. :)

Comments

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

When I was about twelve, things started to get *better* for me. I'd been picked on and reviled before that. Oddly enough, it stopped around then. But... I can tell you the hardest parts of being thirteen itself is that everyone "grows up" at a different pace and not always as much as they think.

I remember meeting a boy who gave me his phone number. My best friend told me to call him. She was boy crazy at the time. I wasn't. While he seemed nice enough, I was afraid he was just teasing me and would laugh at me if I called. Looking back at it, I'm pretty sure I was wrong.

My best friend & another friend were camping with my parents that summer. We met a few boys who were older. My friends wanted to lie about their age and I didn't. I still regret not standing up to them on that one. My parents fortunately were brilliant. They invited the guys to come over to our campsite. One of the guys finally asked "So how old are you anyway?" The three of us went silent. My father cracked out with "Apparently not old enough to count." And that was the end.

Afterwards, my parents explained statutory rape to me. I felt *terrible* on multiple levels. One of which was that I just wasn't interested and wasn't remotely ready for these things. Now I look back and I'm fortunate for the fact that my parents were fairly strict. I could always blame my parents for not letting me do something that I really didn't want to do anyway. It took off a lot of the pressure from other people.

Standing up to your peers is hard at the time, but, you'll be glad you did in the long run. Your friends may change because you're no longer interested in the same things. That is *really* hard at the time, but, it will work out. It's okay to be a "late bloomer" or an early one -- as long as you're doing what makes *you* comfortable.