Writing was very important to me when I was a teenager.

During this period, my main creative niche was moody, self-obsessed fiction.

However, I would occasionally stray into other formats.

At one point, for example, I wrote a letter to JK Rowling explaining why I possessed the perfect personal attributes to be her assistant but I think it must have gotten lost in the post because I never received a reply.

I also wrote in a diary on a regular basis.

I was reading through one of my diaries the other day when I came across a series of entries which I feel prove that, even at the tender age of 14, I was in possession of the emotional maturity and sensitivity that all good writers need to create complex and compelling characters.

A mere day after meeting Luke, it became obvious I was contemplating taking the relationship to the next level:

However, five days later, I discovered something that would change my perception of Luke forever:

It was a devastating blow that altered my world view on a fundamental level:

I think that I was experiencing emotional anguish because I felt very anguished and emotional.

I listened to Britney Spears’ ‘Everytime’ quite a lot – and by ‘quite a lot’ I mean at a rate of around 30 times per day.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before I learned to channel my angst into healthy outlets, such as physical activity:

My teenage years were quite a disorientating time for me.

I was very confused and unsure of myself.

Every little thing that happened to me seemed incredibly dramatic and the world frequently felt like it was on the verge of ending.

Before I was a teenager, life was very simple.

My mind operated in a very logical and consistent manner.

If I had a problem, for instance, I would go to my parents for advice.

Once I progressed into the teenage phase, I found that I was worrying about things great deal more than I had done as a child.

However, I also suddenly experienced an intense desire to keep my issues to myself.

As a result, I existed in a near-constant state of contradiction.

I no longer actively sought out my parents’ advice.

In fact, more often than not, I found myself vehemently disagreeing with them.

This was completely irrational.

I was fully aware of the fact that my parents possessed over 30 years more life experience than me but this failed to prevent me from operating under the assumption that everything they suggested was automatically and intrinsically wrong and not applicable to me in any aspect.

When I was a teenager, I felt like I was the only person who had ever experienced what it was like to be a teenager.

I suspect that this was one of the reasons why I had difficulty apprehending my parents’ advice.

I was unable visualise them as teenagers and therefore found it hard to believe that they could understand what I was going through.

I think I just presumed that they had skipped puberty altogether – as if, by some weird flux in in the space time continuum, they had spontaneously progressed directly from childhood to adulthood.