We know us teenagers are difficult to understand. We know sometimes we act irresponsibly and sometimes it may seem like we don’t listen, like we don’t want to listen, like we don’t care. It may seem like we don’t respect others’ feelings and like we don’t know or understand priorities. It may seem that we don’t give a shit about anything at all except our own selves.

Maybe it’s because of us and how we act, or maybe it’s nothing but an image that has come to represent us as a whole but this “careless attitude” has become a stereotype. A stereotype that adults assume to be associated with all teenagers. This stereotype negatively portrays us as self-obsessed and reckless.

But, speaking as a teenager, this stereotype is not true.

Because we do care.

We care about a lot of stuff. We care if our favorite show is getting renewed for another season. We care when our favorite character on a show or book or movie dies, and we cry because we actually fell in love with them. We care about our favorite band getting broken up, and we care about our favorite singer dying. We care about our favorite movies and shows, and we watch them over and over again, because they make us feel better, happier at times when we have given up hope. We care about meeting out role model even if costs us all of our savings, and we care about watching our favorite youtuber’s videos every day.

We care if we have a fight with our sibling, even though we don’t show it. We care when our parents are disappointed with us. We care when we fight with our mom, and we don’t like leaving dinner and banging our bedroom door shut. We care about spending time with our family and we still love it when out parents take us out for ice cream. We care when we are called out for something wrong we do, and we do try to improve but forgive us, because sometimes we try and we can’t and we need more time. We care if our parents cry or feel stressed, and we want to help but we don’t know how to. We care about meeting our relatives. We care about our grandparents, our aunts, and our uncles.

We care about the summer sun, we care about the cold breeze, we care about the autumn wind, we care about the occasional drizzle and we care about the bloomed spring flowers. We care about our health and we would eat vegetables, but we don’t like them sometimes. We care about our teeth but forgive us because sometimes ice-cream seems too important to waste. We care about going out and playing and we don’t like lazing around all day either. We care about our eyes and we don’t spend as much time on your phones as we are blamed for. We care and know about our weight, and we are trying to cut down the junk but we don’t like hearing about it all the time either. We care about exercising because we want to get fitter and not because we have nothing better to do.

We care when we do well on a test and we care when we fail and get an F. We care about the world and how it works and we are curious to know why the sky is blue and how our body pumps blood. We care about our classrooms. We care about out teachers. We care about our grades, and we get more disappointed in ourselves than our parents when we don’t perform well. We care about doing better next time, and we do try hard. And even if we don’t, we are aware that our colleges see our grades and our resumes list our degrees and our degrees give us a job.

We care about that guy or girl we like, and we care when they like us back. We care if our parents like them, and we do secretly want their approval. We care about going on dates, and we care and stress about our first kiss. We care when we break up. We care when our friend breaks up. Hell, we care when a strangers breaks up because we know how it feels like and we try to offer comfort. We care if we have a date for prom and we care if we have a rose to receive or give on Valentine ’s Day. We care about our feelings and we don’t want to hurt someone else’s. We care about love, and we hate the fact that it is assumed that we aren’t yet capable of falling in love.

We care about all the violence in the world. We care about the sexism, racism and homophobia that the world faces every day. We care when we read dozens of rape cases every week in the news. We care about poverty. We care about world peace and we care about the environment. We care about our trees, our plants, and the beautiful nature. We care about depression, we care about anorexia, and we care about social anxiety. We care about bullying, suicide and peer pressure. We know there are others worse off and we try to count our blessings as often as we can.

We care about our friends and that’s why we get so offended when somebody, even if it’s our parents, insults them. We care about their health, their happiness and their grades too because they are family to us. We care if they get in fight with their boyfriend or if their girlfriend cheats on them. We care about them and we protect them as fiercely as a lioness protects her cubs. We care about their feelings and that’s why we don’t tell them that their new hairstyle just isn’t working for them, and why we tell when something is stuck in their teeth.

We care about other stupid things like getting a good picture for instagram, or wearing a great outfit to an outing with friends. We care about our birthdays, our school trips, our haircuts, our pocket money, our book collection, our phones, our acne, our zits, our eyebrows, the hair on our legs and hands, our learner’s license, not because we don’t know our priorities, or because we are materialistic, but because we are young and we have our whole life ahead of us, a whole new world left to explore, a whole list of adventures to go on and a whole lot of things to discover. We care about these things because these are important in our lives right now. We are trying to live in the moment before we get drawn into adulthood, and have to live by the rules.

We are not careless. We are carefree.

So maybe, we are difficult to understand and confusing sometimes but forgive us, because we are still figuring this out, and we would love your support on the way.