Institutions treat the personal traits of adolescents not as an individual’s own universe, but as evolution of an animal.

Institutions treat the personal traits of adolescents not as an individual’s own universe, but as changes to be recorded on paper and data to be recorded, categorized, and managed in the evolution of an animal. If their families declare who they are, that settles it; because even if the words of “inexperienced youths” are acknowledged, they will never be taken seriously. Somehow, it was people who knew nothing about my inner self who wrote down who I was, and simply because my bodily age was still small, their words—not mine—were the ones that counted. If I opposed them, if I said, “But they don’t know me,” this too would be dismissed merely as “a sign of rebellion.” Everything I said, even the slightest physical movement I made, was immediately reported to my parents, and they would reactively scold me just based on what they were told—without knowing the actual reality or even bothering to ask me about it. Hence, I was left with two options: speak and be pathologized; stay silent and be misread. I preferred the second. So I stayed silent. For years. I know very well what it means to fear that all my passions, thoughts, and feelings—in short, my very being—might be seen as “problematic.” Not because I was afraid of being different, but because if I appeared that way to the outside world, they would “intervene” to suppress this “deviance,” and in doing so they would suffocate me even more.