Disclaimer: I am not an expert.

“Everything will be okay.”

You’re probably deathly sick of that phrase, and by this time in our teenage angsty lives, it has been said multiple times by friends, family and strangers.

But everything will be okay.

I have not finished my homework, nor have I even finished high school. Clearly, I don’t know the meaning of life nor do I know how to cook anything beyond $1 ramen packets.

But I’ve fallen — more so stumbled into love — or as much as “love” can be at the age of 17, I guess. I have cried myself to sleep and woken up with eyes so swollen that my face is unrecognizable. I have slut-shamed and been slut-shamed only to come to the maxim of “you do you”. I have let grades and numbers define who I am, forcing self-destructive thoughts that have made me cry over A-minuses. I have poured every bit of my heart into a boy who sexually assaulted me and refuses to acknowledge it because “by the very definition, you can’t rape your [partner]” (Michael Cohen, Special Counsel at The Trump Organization). (Another disclaimer: those of you who know my current boyfriend, this boy is not him). I have been sleep-deprived for the past four years due to schoolwork, but occasionally — I admit — it’s because of the hilarious CaptainSparklez or Caspar Lee YouTube videos.

And maybe you completely understand what I just said or maybe you don’t, but if AP Lang has taught me one thing, it’s the value of ethos, and I guess that little blurb was my “ethos”.

Anyway, onwards to what I actually want to get to.

In our lives, we, as teenagers, with our hormones and ridiculous expectations to act like adults even when treated like children, are going to go through, for a lack of a better term, a lot. We are going to learn, and we are going to grow, at different paces of course.

And there will be multiple points in our lives when life simply just sucks. For some, it only gets as bad as a heartbreak. For others, suicidal thoughts.

And I’m not telling you that everything will be okay right now, but whatever struggle you’re going through, you will make it out alive. As much as it hurts and as hard as it is to keep going when the going gets tough, you are strong. I don’t know you, but I know at least that because you’re breathing, you’re alive, even when every part of your body aches not to be.

I’m not here to give you advice on how to get better because I’m not some magical fairy who can cure the pain, though sometimes I wish I could be. I can only say: sometimes it doesn’t get better right away, but when it does, damn, does it feel good.

There will come a point in the near, distant or very very distant future when you will finally be relieved of whatever pain you are struggling through right now. And you will be free.

You will reach that point in life — the one you never imagined could exist.

Because you’re okay. You’re happy.

And for some, such an emotion is not so foreign, but for others, it’s something almost unrecognizable, and you will realize one day that the warm feeling in your soul and the peace you feel in your heart is happiness.

That moment may not last forever, but it’s your moment, and you will reach it.

So yes, everything gets better, eventually. It hurts now; maybe it has been hurting and maybe it will continue to hurt because there’s a little part of you who is addicted to the comfort of sadness, but you will reach a point when you will have more good days than bad, when you will be happier more than you are sad.

And those tears you have cried over the person who shattered your heart or the coach who degraded you during practice, will become tears of joy.

And you will be happy, even if that happiness is different from the past innocent and childish kind.

You are breathing. You are strong.

You will grow, and you will become a better you.

And I believe in you.