some analysis!
https://tech.lgbt/@agatha/112088899632303795

@agatha I've got a lot of yearning for what I wish my teen years could've been, for what that's worth.

@agatha i just wish i hadnt fucking wasted em

@agatha those were the worst years of my life, if I had my knowledge now back then, I would do everything differently.

@agatha i dont miss most of my teen years but i miss like preteen-early teens if we take away whatever was going on in my household

@agatha I only miss consuming certain media for the first time then, but I do not miss being a teenager nor do I miss my experiences, though a huge part of it was because of my autism rather than being trans, the trans part mainly amplified it (late teens to early adulthood was where being trans kicked my ass)

@agatha I'm cis and could have done without the mental health problems and the near-constant feeling of isolation from my peers among other problems. Probably my fondest memories involved either being by myself or one of the rare instances where I would be part of a conversation and not feel like an out of place weirdo.

@agatha I feel like in a way I'm now living the teen years I wish I had, as much as coming out was the hardest thing I've ever done, I wouldn't undo it for the world

@agatha @hannu_ikonen Cis, and I don’t really miss my teen years. I was on antidepressants through most of them and now, in my 40s, I do not need antidepressants. I think that says a lot.

@agatha I feel like I didn't have a terrible experience all this considered, but I still don't miss that time. I'm a different person now 🤷🏻‍♀️

@agatha trans and… very complex. yes and no. there are certainly things we do very miss

@agatha trans and I don’t miss my teen years, but I can’t stop wishing they would have been different.

@agatha I only found out after my teenage years that half the reason for my mental health being horrible was trying to force myself into a gendered role.

@agatha I voted “trans and I don’t miss my teen years”, but it’s weird, sometimes I do feel some weird nostalgia about them, like for the media I consumed back then which gave me an escape from all the shit and the dysphoria, or the fact that back then it wasn’t that hard to draw regularly (because it was a sorely needed distraction and one of the only things other than media that gave me joy back then), or the fact that because school didn’t exhaust my capacity to think and learn as much as uni does so that I had energy left to freely learn about a bunch of random stuff. I wish I still had the energy and attention span to regularly in my own free time read random stuff about science for hours, and being a voracious reader, and drawing a lot (in school mostly, teachers hated it). I don’t miss the dysphoria and the generally awful and traumatizing experience school was and the horrible mental health stuff I was dealing with and all of that (that led to my life revolving around art, science and media because escapism and because school and not having to adult wasn’t as exhausting on an intellectual level (but school was more than just exhausting on an emotional level) and I still had energy to do all that). I guess now that I think about it it’s also that teens aren’t expected to be as perfectionist in their hobbies as adults, if you draw badly as a teen that’s not a big deal, if you draw badly as an adult then it’s seen as much worse than never trying to draw. So I miss that freedom to fuck around and do things badly (at the cost of bullying actually, I’m now realizing how bullshit this narrative is because teenagers aren’t that free to do that either, and I should treat my adult self with the same compassion as I do my teenage self and allow myself to do things badly because as an adult it actually has less consequences if you stop judging yourself so much and caring so much about people being judgemental, because as an adult you’re not stuck in a class with them and you can do “fuck’em” much more easily). Basically I guess all of this tells me that adulting sucks but also that I should stop being so harsh to myself because I’m stopping myself from doing at least some of those things I miss about my teenage self.

@agatha cannot say I miss the ones I had. am very much reliving my teenage years the way they should've been right now.

@agatha I feel like miss is awfully strong phrasing. There are aspects of my teen years I wish I still had. But I wouldn’t go back. I also didn’t know what was going on in my teen years and the dysphoria didn’t hugely set in until I found out it could be changed.

@agatha if it were possible to set roughly a decade of time/life experience on fire, I would. ​​

@agatha for me, trans, and I wish my teen years had gone differently

@agatha I don't miss them, even if i do feel nostalgic for some stuff, like 2013-ish youtube era spore, minecraft and gmod videos, as well as playing Oblivion and Fallout 3.
So yeah, the whole being a teen? Don't miss. Some stuff i enjoyed during my teen years? Miss.
(and i do try to play Oblivion - no surprised i never could do it before XD it's sooooooooo broken)

@agatha The only people I've ever known who miss their time at high school were bullies tbh.

@agatha I'm going to say cis and no, vut it's a tricky question because I miss some of my innocence and my extra free time and health, but in general I like the way I am as an educated adult. I feel like I have a more intellectually and emotionally fulfilling life now.

@agatha i miss being a teen, i dont exactly miss my teenage years... i do want to relive them, do everything better, be my true self, that sort of stuff

@agatha I'm surprised that there are a higher ratio of trans people who liked their teens compared to the cis folk who answered this poll 

@agatha By these results, it would seem trans people are twice as likely to miss their teen years.