Ansha

age: undisclosed
Barishal, Bangladesh

Leave it to the Future: I, Ansha Tajrian, have been very indecisive about my future plans. It seems as though every year, I get a new aim in life. Sometimes, I want to be a doctor, sometimes I want to be a scientist. Other times I want to be a detective or a journalist or study archeology or history. I want to try everything, but I know I should choose one profession. I'm so indecisive about my future. Often times I feel insecure and anxious because everyone around me seems to have it all planned out. Everyone seems to have their future goals fixed and they know exactly what to do. Whenever someone asks me, "What's your aim in life?" I don't know what to say. I often lie because I'm too scared that if I say "I don't know," I might get shamed for it. But then I saw my friend with similar issues as me. But, she isn't too anxious about it. According to her, we are still so young. We have a long way ahead before we enter the professional world. Even if we have everything planned out, who's to say that we will be able to do things according to the plan? We could have one dream now, but we might end up doing something completely different. It's okay if you don't have a set goal now. What matters is that you wish to do something in the future. You want to find your purpose. And what might that be? Let the future decide! I'm still in grade nine, my life has just begun. If one worries about their future too much, they will forget to live in the present. Let the future decide itself.

Rabia

age: undisclosed
Barishal, Bangladesh

A Teenager’s Identity Crisis: Is it even possible to feel superior & inferior at the same time? Is it possible to feel like you are so many people at once? Is it possible to be visible yet invisible at times? Well, yes. Something I have often heard from my mom is “Being a teenager is like being on a roller coaster of emotions. At times you feel like you are at the zenith, and then you feel like nothing more than a sand particle that has fallen apart.” During the initial days of my teenage years, I thought there was no way this entire teenage-emotions “blah, blah, blah” thing would reach me. I was so confident, probably because of my blind faith and my sophistication. However, every dot of my mom's words started to connect as soon as I reached my actual teenage years. I have found myself in such a scenario where I'm standing amidst feeling invincible but not being able to measure up. Somewhere in the middle, people believe in my academic excellence. At some points, I do too. But mostly, I feel that whatever goodness I have achieved in my academics so far is not yet worthy of being called excellent, invincible, or simply the best. In this regard, my friends have always managed to flatter me, complimenting me in every possible way. However, deep in my heart, I know that there is a lot missing. But what? Apart from academics, numerous experiences have contributed to my identity crisis. As a student involved more or less in debates, anchoring, speeches, and various competitions, the expectations placed upon me, if I am not wrong, have always been high. My teachers, parents, and friends have/do/will always expect the best for me from me. I definitely expect the same as well, but not knowing why, I feel hollow sometimes. I feel numb sometimes. Why do I sometimes feel like all the expectations placed upon me might only lead to a destination of disappointment? Why do I have this terrible fear of being good at first and then faltering when the actual test arrives? And how come I mostly manage to hide or conceal it? It's not that every time I have felt disappointed or unsatisfied with my work. On the contrary, I obviously have my own achievements that I can't help being proud of. But in some cases, when I had a great deal of expectations and eyes upon me, sometimes tangled with tension and pressure, I had successfully managed to mess up. This is what truly worries me: Am I genuinely good, or is it just a mirage of people? Or perhaps, are my own false perceptions and self-doubts obscuring my view? Yet another significant aspect of my life where I couldn't decide who I am is my relationships and communication with people. They are so diverse that I feel as if I am a mosaic of too many personalities. Some might say that this is indeed normal. But somehow I just can't digest it. In my professional life, i.e. school, I usually manage to interact with people wisely and responsibly. With my buddies. I'm friendly. Let's say that I'm ambivert there. Whereas at home, I'm an absolutely different person. I probably don't even speak more than 100 words a day there. It's not that I don't share a strong bond with my family, but still, why can't I interact with them efficiently? And again, when I'm in front of my relatives, whom I always seen growing up now, I usually don't even speak more than 50 words to them. Is it because I'm a child, because I'm an introvert, or because I don't want to be the center of attention? Or is it because I just prioritize my inner peace more? Sometimes I feel that being the youngest, if I speak more, people might think I'm arrogant, but honestly, staying quiet and being a quiet girl isn't promising either. It becomes terrible at times in fact. It feels as if you're strangling your inner voice and letting people stay with whatever perceptions they want to have about you, being clueless about who you really are. While I think this is terrible, I believe it's worth it for my inner peace. Yet again, sometimes I can't help but ponder how astonishingly this has rendered me invisible, muted, and self-centered in the eyes of my own people. But if I prefer staying quiet and unbothered in front of them, how come I manage to interact well enough with people whom I barely know in my professional life? Wasn't it supposed to be the opposite? Anyways, interactions don't help me either. I just find myself being a people pleaser, trying my best to avoid conflicts and disagreements, putting on a good smile while my soul seeks even the tiniest dint of opportunity to speak up about whatever I actually think, believe, and want to say, regardless of others' judgments. Well, it happens very rarely that I speak my heart out. And those bare minimum times when I have done it, I have successfully regretted it later. Probably my inner peace wants to win badly, at any cost. When it comes to my friends, I basically love them. I love my besties and close friends. Usually, I fail to show it. I really wonder what sort of friend I am. Some say that I am understanding; some believe I am mean and selfish; some feel that I care about nothing but my academics; some say I am intelligent, and some simply express that I am boring and reactionless. The funniest part is that I cannot really conclude if any of these characteristics do not exist in me. If I were an element, these characteristics would probably be my isotypes, existing in various percentages that keep changing. Well, I believe that these diverse personalities of mine depend on people's behavior toward me. Rapid changes are possible even due to their tiniest actions. But while these frequent changes happen in “how I appear in front of them,” did I somehow lose, or am I losing my real identity? Who am I? Am I the one that people think I am? Or the one they expect me to be? Or am I the one I think I am? And then what on earth do I actually think I am? Most importantly, what is my purpose to serve? What difference can I make? Fun fact: I probably do not even want to know the answers to all these questions right now. I would rather love to know these answers gradually, while connecting every single dot of my identical confusion, placing every irrelevant puzzle piece into a picture. Perhaps. that is how the journey of self-discovery is meant to be. But how do I suppress the storm between my thoughts and actions?

Sarina

age: 16 years
New York, USA

During my time helping to organize a conference on gender inequality, I was profoundly impacted by the experiences and perspectives shared by our diverse speakers. Our conference brought together speakers, ambassadors and students from various countries whom shed light on how gender norms are portrayed across different cultures, which offered not only me, but the other students attending the conference about how gender norms are represented through different countries and how young students like ourselves can take action. For me, obe of the most inspiring parts of the conference was witnessing student-led debates. Young boys and girls came together to discuss their personal experiences with gender inequality and shared their visions for change. Their passion and determination to fight for gender rights were truly uplifting. It was incredible to see the next generation so committed to making a difference, and it renewed my own commitment to this cause. This experience not only educated me on the complexities of gender inequality but also gave me hope that real, positive change is possible when we all work together. Before attending this conference, I felt like my views and perspectives were so limited to the people around me and what was happening locally, but after I felt like there was so much more to know about and the implications of gender inequality globally, and how some thing that may work in one place may not have the same impact on another place. It was truly inspiring to work with such likeminded people, who shared the same goal, to make the world a more equal and fair place for all genders.

Pigeon-2*

age: 19 years
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

Anecdote: Between Darkness and Light I was eight years old when school stopped being a safe place for me. What was supposed to be a space for learning and friendship turned into a daily nightmare. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to study; I loved learning, but my classmates made me feel as if I were invisible. I was the girl everyone ignored, the one left out of games and conversations. Every day, I wondered what I had done to deserve so much disdain, but the reality is that sometimes, there’s no answer. I was just there, and that seemed to be enough for them to hurt me. The worst part was that whenever I tried to defend myself, the teachers always blamed me. It was as if, being a girl, my voice didn’t matter. As if my tears didn’t matter, and my pain was just an echo in an endless void. The day I finished elementary school, I felt a bitter mix of relief and pain. I had won first place, but at the graduation ceremony, they didn’t mention my name. While other girls and boys received their diplomas with smiles and applause, I stood in silence, wondering if I even existed. My mother, who had always been by my side, looked at me with sadness as we left. It wasn’t until we were in the parking lot that a teacher caught up with us, handing my mom a crumpled diploma, as if my effort was worth no more than a forgotten piece of paper. The disappointment in my mother’s eyes broke my heart. I knew my dad worked tirelessly to make sure we didn’t lack anything, and I wanted to be worthy of his sacrifice. But every day was a battle. I hated school, I hated feeling inadequate, I hated the image I saw in the mirror, which only reflected a broken and rejected girl. Over time, that pain rooted itself in my mind, corroding every corner of my self-esteem. I grew up full of self-hatred, convinced that I was worthless. That hatred became a burden so heavy it almost drowned me. Until one day, years later, my mother and I visited an aunt who had returned to the city. That’s when I found out that my cousin, someone I had loved like a sister, had taken her own life. The bullying she had suffered at her school was so brutal that she couldn’t bear it. Some girls, who felt powerful in destroying her, ripped out chunks of her hair, burned her, and pushed her until she couldn’t take it anymore. And then, she decided that death was her only way out. Seeing my aunt devastated, shattered into a thousand pieces, made me realize something I had never considered before: the pain I felt didn’t just hurt me; it also had the power to destroy those who loved me. I didn’t want to see my mother the way I saw my aunt that day. I couldn’t let the darkness I felt in my heart consume me to the point of leading me down the same path. At that time, I was thirteen years old and in middle school. Days after visiting my aunt, one of the girls who had bullied me for years ruined my work by pouring water over it. It was as if she was telling me that I didn’t deserve anything good in life. In a fit of desperation and rage, I confronted her. I grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the ground, and poured paint on her face. I screamed that I was tired of her, that it wasn’t my fault her parents didn’t love her, that it wasn’t my fault her mother believed she had ruined their lives. I told her she had no right to make me feel like I was the one who was worthless. She started to cry, and for a brief moment, I felt powerful. But that feeling quickly faded, leaving only an even bigger void than before. I knew what I had done was wrong, but at that moment, it seemed like the only way to make the pain stop. Today, looking back, I realize that even though I got her to stop bothering me, what I really lost was a part of myself. Instead of healing, I filled myself with more hatred, not only towards others but also towards myself for having let anger take over. I learned that violence, whether physical or emotional, only perpetuates the cycle of suffering. Bullying is not just a series of cruel acts; it’s a poison that spreads, affecting everyone it touches. My story is a warning to other girls who, in their pain, may be tempted to respond with hatred. Don’t let the poison consume you. Seek help, talk to someone who understands you, and above all, never lose hope that things can get better. Because in the end, the real victory is not in defeating those who hurt you, but in finding the strength to love yourself, even when everything else seems to be falling apart.