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I feel like I'm missing out.


CaptainMel

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I love being asexual and I have so much pride in it. I have a tiny flag in my room and love being ace. However, I often feel left out. I'm 16 and all my friends are being reckless teenagers like they are supposed to be. And I'm not. My friends use this thing called a 'rice purity score' to judge how much stuff you have done. Some are related to sex and others drugs. If you take out all the sex stuff, there is only 18 things on the list (out of 100). I'm just having trouble relating to my friends and enjoying my teenage years. 

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Guest Falco Peregrinus

Hi and welcome to AVEN!

Here's some

:cake::cake: CAKE :cake::cake:

 

I'm in the same boat right now - you're definitely not alone there! I've talked to some people who are "living it up"  and I don't think it's quite a glamorous as the media / popular opinion would seem to indicate. I don't think we're missing much. Besides, don't let anyone tell you what you're supposed to do with any part of your life, especially an era as formative as your teenage years. If you want to experiment, that's your decision! If you want to avoid social interaction altogether, that is also your decision (those were two rather extreme examples, but you get the point)! Don't worry about relating - while you might miss out on a few events, you're all teenagers and you'll always have common ground.

 

If you ever need to talk, feel free to PM me!

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I got 94, pretty much the only stuff I clicked were drinking options, and even then it was very few.

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You can't miss out on something you don't want in the first place. Engaging in activities you're not actually interested in won't give you the same level of happiness your pals get from it (if any).

 

Life isn't a competition.

 

:cake:

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@Homer In my case, what makes me feel like I'm missing out is knowing that I couldn't enjoy sex.

For instance, I don't like potatoes in any form, but it's many people's favourite food, and watching people get pleasure from eating it, makes me wish I could.

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To Each Their Own

I agree with what @Homer said above. Trying to mimic what other people do won’t make you happy. 

 

But also, whenever we compare how we are feeling on the inside to how other people look on the outside, we are always going to fall short. Sometimes people cover up what they’re feeling on the inside with a smile. Just like people can never completely know what’s going on inside of you, you cannot know what is going on inside of them. Honestly, I’ve done things in high school that left me burning in shame...which led me to lying...which led to more shame...which led to more ugly things. 

 

I don’t know that teenagers are supposed to be reckless. Is it a time for discovery? Sure. But recklessness implies action without thought to consequences. Teenage sex has consequences. Drunk driving has consequences. When consequences have the potential to affect the rest of your life, i don’t really think recklessness is all that glamorous. Only in Hollywood. 

 

Life gets better after high school. Soon you’ll be able to make your own decisions about your own life: where you want to live, what you want to do. And all this stuff, this ‘rice purity score,’ is going to seem so trivial to you. 

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I'm now curious whether this "test" can be found online :D

 

@MichaelTannock OTOH, there will be foodstuff which you like but which makes other people gag. Same goes for sex and other activities. I don't see the fun in DIY stuff, but don't get my mother started...

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It's better not to be a  reckless teenager anyway.  A lot of them end up pregnant, with an STD/STI, drug addictions, hooked on cigarettes, become an alcoholic etc.

 

A bunch of people I went to high school with ruined their lives so much "having fun" have been on the streets since.  Quite a few didn't make it to graduation, they died in drunken crashes.  Can pretty much guarantee all of them had the 'it won't happen to me' mindset and sadly it did anyway.

 

Just be yourself and don't worry about not doing what the others are doing :)

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As many people here have said, there is a big difference between exploration and recklessness.

 

I also didn't do much as a teenager, and there are a lot of experiences that, as an adult, I regret not having, because I could have gotten away with them then and I can't now (or am more limited). I never dyed my hair crazy colors - now my job won't let me. I was always so worried about what others would think about it that I never experimented with different styles of clothing or haircuts or jewelry/accessories. I never even rearranged my bedroom. I would know so much more about myself and be so much more comfortable with myself now if I had done these types of things sooner instead of caring so much what others would think.

 

There are other things I didn't do as well. I never snuck out at night. I never went to crazy parties. I never lied about where I was going or who I was spending time with. I never did drugs. I never did any underage drinking (except on this one camping trip when my dad mixed me a margarita one night - I didn't even finish it). I never had sex. The crazy thing is, at the time, I didn't even worry about the things I did come to regret. But I often worried about the fact that I wasn't doing the things in this paragraph. And now, I'm going through my self discovery phase late. But I don't regret any of the things that I felt worried about not doing at the time. I'm glad I didn't go drinking - as an adult I can say it's not all it was hyped up to be as a teenager. I don't think I would have enjoyed myself at the parties that I missed - especially since it would have meant less quiet nights at home with the close friends that mattered. I'm glad I didn't do drugs - the last thing I need is to be more limited now because of something I got hooked on as a kid. I knew a girl who got kicked out of my school because she got pregnant. And while I can't say I'm particularly glad that I never snuck out or lied about my whereabouts (because although bad things could have happened in those circumstances, I don't know anyone that actually did have something bad happen), I certainly can't say I regret the decision. It just seems so irrelevant now. I guess it's good that I didn't - I could have regretted it if something bad happened, and if nothing bad happened, I think it would still be just as irrelevant now anyway. And it's not like I never had fun. My fun was just mild and safe. Consisted of walking around the mall with my close friends (even though none of us had any money to spend), playing games, watching movies, writing stories together, playing more games, sharing music, creating my own games, solving puzzles, and so on...

 

So it is true that this is a critical time for trying out new things. It's also true that things will get better when you leave high school - I really enjoyed college a lot. But the things you should try are things that help you discover who you are and what you like - not the "exciting" things that all your peers are doing. In the long run, those things really just don't matter.

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