Thoughts from a Teenage Nobody

17 years old. Reading books is my passion. Nighttime clouds irritate me. Stars are my favorite.

[soreninthesky]

I just got my #appraisingpages bookish box! I'm so happy! It came with a HP Shirt, Butterbeer Salt Scrub, a Hogwarts Coffee Tumbler, a watercolor print, and a literary necklace! I'm a very happy Harry Potter nerd right now! #harrypotter #bookishbox #hogwarts #dumbledore #butterbeer #expectopatronum #booknerd #books #bookstagram #bibliophile

[soreninthesky]

#inspirationalquotes #inspiration #movingforward #selfconfidence #selfawareness

[soreninthesky]

"I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell." -Walt Whitman❤ #books #words #waltwhitman #bibliophile #yafiction #youngadult #lovetoread

[soreninthesky]

#currentreads #currentlyreading #harrypotter #prideandprejudice #theodyssey #fscottfitzgerald #thissideofparadise #thebookthief #marcuszusak #jkrowling #homer #janeausten

[soreninthesky]

Teenage Nobody is reading Harry Potter

Currently reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I started this in August but got distracted and I'm picking it back up again. The Harry Potter books are a true gift to humanity

[soreninthesky]

Currently reading:

More than This by Patrick Ness. I am about 250 pages into it, halfway through and I can say with certainty that this is a book that keeps you on your toes. Just as you start to think you’ve got it all figured out, it flips you around and throws another twist at you. Overall a captivating read so far

[soreninthesky]

Updated: finished reading More Than This by Patrick Ness. It was an incredibly good read. Continually kept me on my toes and didn't give away any secrets until the end. The whole story built up until the very end and then it explained what it was getting at.

[soreninthesky]

Thoughts from a teenage nobody

That tingling you feel in your fingers when your hand falls asleep is what I imagine wandless magic would feel like

[bloodyhellhptattoos]

Here is my Slytherin crest tattoo. I got it done in Orlando :)

[hermyjw13]

I love the fact that so many people get the Deathly Hallows tattoo even though people will tell you that it’s mainstream that it’s so unoriginal because everybody gets it but 50 years from now there will be a whole generation of old people thousands of thousands of people with these tattoos and people are going to ask what they are and we will have the honor of telling them that we are the Harry Potter generation we’re family even if you don’t have the Deathly Hallows tattoo or any Harry Potter tattoo at all. Harry Potter made us a family we are a huge family and we will always have each others backs until the very end.

[soreninthesky]

Write about the moon

[soreninthesky]

Currently reading:

More than This by Patrick Ness. I am about 250 pages into it, halfway through and I can say with certainty that this is a book that keeps you on your toes. Just as you start to think you've got it all figured out, it flips you around and throws another twist at you. Overall a captivating read so far

[julieellen]

A few days ago, I shared @edwardspoonhands’ Facebook message he called “20 Something Guys who Date High Schoolers Are Not Cool.” It is a great message, reminding young people that you do not have to seek approval from older people just because they are older. He makes a great point, the adult men who seek relationships with high school girls are looking for relationships where they have complete control.

I was really grateful to Hank for posting it, and I shared it hoping my friends would appreciate it as well. I wrote that it was something I needed to hear when I was young.

But the first comment I received was this:

“When I was 16 I dated a 24 year old. He never pressured me or tried to control me. I dumped him because he was too nice (and no, we never had sex.)

I was just an asshole.”

That is not the side of the narrative that needs exposure. The ‘oh, there’s no harm in it’ argument is already pervasive in the media and the conversation about these relationships.

The important, mostly unheard stories are the ones told in Hank’s post, @sarahdessen’s Seventeen article, or even songs like Fifteen by @taylorswift and Hands Clean by Alanis Morissette. Those are the stories I wish I had heard at fifteen.

From about thirteen or fourteen, I craved attention from older men. I needed to feel wanted, because I wasn’t getting the validation I needed from my peers. If you add to that the fact that the internet was still relatively new in households, and the lack of parental supervision… I got myself into some trouble. I had multiple and varied interactions with adult men while I was in high school, and none of them were healthy.

Her supposedly healthy relationship with a 24 year old man at 16 is not the story I needed to hear when I was desperately craving the approval of a man who I had met through a Harry Potter RPG. It was not what I needed to hear when he demanded my address, asked me to lie to my parents and spend my birthday weekend with him. It was not what I needed to hear when he skyped me naked from his shower or his bedroom, without my consent. And it is not what I needed to hear when he was blaming me for the unhappiness in his life, and claiming I had ‘driven him away’ from the website where we met.

That ‘relationship’ still affects me to this day. It took me six years to truly understand what he had done, the laws he had broken. And it took me six years to speak up to the people running that site, but what happened to me wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t love, it was a power play.

The approval of adults who are sexually attracted to minors is worth nothing. You do not have to respect or admire someone just because they are older than you. Wisdom and worthiness are not guaranteed side effects of age.

It took me a long time to decide what to do about the Facebook comment, but in the end I decided to delete it. My Facebook page is mine, it is available only to those whom I choose, and I get to choose what message my Facebook promotes.

And my message for young girls, young people is to learn from my mistakes.

The only approval you need is your own.

[soreninthesky]

A little food for thought

[soreninthesky]

My new books are beautiful <3 #bibliophile #nevertoomanybooks #yanovels

[moan-s]

[soreninthesky]

Couple tattoos? Not this cheesy..

[sebastienmillon]

“Hammock”

[the-cryinggame]

In fact, I’m full-on gawking, wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive, just like he is.

The Sky Is Everywhere (via the-cryinggame)

[soreninthesky]

Harry: Albus Severus Potter, you were named after the two bravest men I ever knew

James, Remus, Sirius, Ron, Hagrid, Fred, George, Bill, Charlie, Arthur, Mad-Eye, Kingsley, Dean, Seamus, and Neville (collectively): Ok. That sounds fake but ok.