17 Lessons by 17 | a late birthday post

Obviously, I procrastinated so much posting this. I actually finished this post in January but I delayed the posting because I don't have the perfect photo for this post (and still doesn't but I need to post something on my blog so who cares about a perfect photo). By the time I'm posting this, I'm already 17 years 1 month 15 days old.

I turned 17 on January 11th! Yay, I finally can take the KPP test. Actually, I already took it and praise Allah, I passed the test🙌 I was so nervous before taking the test, the idea of needing to pay if I want to repeat the test made me really anxious. Luckily, I passed. So. Back to my birthday. I didn't have a celebration, my parents were busy and still are, but I did get some birthday wishes from the people I love and it was enough for me.

I've been meaning to write this post since my birthday last year, but I figured that probably it would be better if I write this when I am older than 16. 16 sounds too young, and 17 still sounds young but 17 means I have 3 years before I turn 20 so if it's rounded up, it's closest to 20 and it means 17 is quite mature for teenagehood, whatever that means.

So today, I'm doing the honour of sharing 17 main lessons that I learned during my 17 years living on Earth:

1. I actually don't know anything yet. Maybe today when I'm writing this, I'll see myself as a quite wise person for my age, but next year when I read this post again, I'll think that I was so immature and say "girl, you don't know anything."

 2. Read more. It'll show you a lot of things, types of people and bring you to many different places. If you can't experience it yourself, at least you know some perspectives from people who experienced those things.

3. Don't spend too much time on planning, spend it on doing what you want. Just imagine how much time you will waste planning the perfect way to do something. No matter how much you plan, there is bound to be imperfection and THAT IS PERFECTLY OKAY. 

4. When a friendship ended, most probably you might have done something wrong too. Don't blame just the other party. Try to see it from their side. Or if you haven't done something wrong, just think that it ended for a reason. Everything ends eventually, right? Your friendship with that person just ended sooner than you expected. As some wise people said, their chapter in your life ended, and that is okay.

5. You don't need a specific time to be better. Why wait until the next morning if you can make at least a little different right now?

6. Practice what you preach! Remember the times when you said be yourself and don't belittle other people's pain? Well, it applies to you too.

7. No matter how much people help you, if you don't want to help yourself, nothing is going to be better. Like people said, after all, in the end, you only have yourself because people will leave.

8. Label is not everything.

9. You are a Ravenclaw, no matter how many times you're sorted into Gryffindor. You subconsciously manipulated the sorting, open your eyes!

10. Mental illness isn't supposed to be romanticized at all. There's nothing beautiful about it. Nothing to be glorified. It is painful and it's dangerous to see it as something other than things that hurt. 

11. You really should stop downloading music illegally.

12. DO NOT COMPARE YOUR PAIN TO OTHER PEOPLE. You are not in their shoes so you don't have a right to judge whether their pain is valid or not. Don't say "you never get hurt" to other people because everyone has their own definition of what hurt is.

13. Learning is hard, but it'll be worth it. Maybe you don't see the point of learning about indices and logarithm now but what about later in life? You might use it.

14. Say yes more but don't be afraid of the word no. 

15. Celebrate the little things. Be grateful for the little things and you'll feel happier with your life.

16. Always say the truth. You are a bad liar, people see through you.

17. Learning about other people will teach you something about yourself. And the more you know yourself, the better. It's important to know yourself.