Ask your grandma what scared her at sixteen. Turns out every generation thinks it’s the first one to feel lost.

Being lost at sixteen feels like a private emergency, something that happened to you and not to the calm adults around you. It did happen to them. The people who look settled now were once just as unsure about what they wanted, and they mostly did not tell anyone. Knowing that does not fix the feeling, but it does take the shame out of it.

Pick one older person you already see and ask what they were worried about at your age. Keep the question small and let them talk. You will probably hear a version of your own week, told from forty years down the road.