Thirteen at thirty (100)

Imperial Teen - No Matter What You Say (Official Music Video)

The end.

These last 100 days of mine, although not as epic as those of Napoleon, have been crucial for me. This column has also served as a sort of self-therapy journey, during which I have revisited, sometimes more reluctantly than willingly, what it means to be thirteen at thirty. First and foremost, it is implicit that I have gone ‘back’—and I feel like I have gone back—regarding certain perspectives I had set for myself, but above all, in one way or another, these pieces have been like reliving certain states of mind, if not particular situations. Many traces are connected to significant memories, and many emotions have resurfaced: from the inadequacy in relation to the world, through the rediscovery of bodies and feelings—both my own and those of others—up to the opposite of not feeling in the right place, namely that healthy and somewhat silly arrogance that might also lead us to make foolish mistakes, but nevertheless makes us bold and feels justified because we are in the flow of life itself. "It doesn’t matter what others say": isn’t this perhaps the greatest truth (and also the greatest lie) of adolescence?