This is the book I wish I had when I was 12 years old. In fact, it's the book I wish I had every year growing up. I'm now 21 and I still need this book.

This book contains the stuff I wish I had told my high school and university self. If I only knew that other girls were going through the same sad, stupid, weird problems as me, I probably could've avoided a crap ton of damage to my self-esteem, worth, and mentality, and I wouldn't have felt like I was the only girl growing up with this problem.

It's terrifying that one of the most common phrases among girls is "I feel so alone."

To feel less alone, we read books about girls and their triumphs. We follow girls online who have the lives we're jealous of. We befriend the women we strive to be. We admire ladies who have already climbed to the top and now share how they reached perfection, which gives us hope.

We end up reading stories about teenagers written by women in their late twenties or thirties who have already made it from point A to B and are starting a new life chapter.

I'm tired of it. I want to read a story written by a young girl. Not a 30-year-old parent of two who lives behind a picket white fence and drives her kids to school in a Honda Civic.

I want to read a story about a girl is in the middle of it all – the mess, the love, the pain, the healing. I don't want a triumph story because perfection is never reached. I want a true story.

I want a story where the writer just gets it because she's just like me. A girl that is still struggling, still stuck, and trying her best between the stages of childhood and adulthood.

That's why this is not a success story.

It is not a weight loss story or "I now appreciate who I am as a person, I was beautiful all along" story, or the "I wasted my time with horrible men and now I'm happy to be single" story either.

Because often the people who wrote those stories ended up gaining back the weight. They returned to the self-deprecating act of calling themselves ugly. And the "I'm over dating assholes" women returned to dating the assholes, but with a fresh wardrobe and a new haircut.

I'm not at the start of my journey nor am I close to the end.

I'm living it as it's happening, trying to heal in the middle of it all, which is why I can see the smaller, more important things that we tend to forget when we retell our story years from now.

When I'm 30, I may only remember the happiest or the worst times and forget what happened in between.

This book is my contingency so that I won't forget the small things that mattered.

Many micro factors play into why a woman is the woman she is today. From the underwear she wears to the books she reads, from the friends she surrounds herself with to the neighbourhood she's raised in and the style of music she listens to.

It's difficult to find a book that mentions the macro and micro parts of being a teenager. Most stories glamourize the big, sexy wins and fat losses, but never the small stuff: the things we don't think are a big deal in the moment until we've matured a bit.

These are the small things that build up inside of us and we don't realize they're the source of our faults until it's too late, and we're spiralling and thinking about throwing ourselves out of a moving car.

I call those special moments: "mental breakdowns."

Optimists call them a mental breakthrough. Healthy people without problems call them spiritual awakenings. I mean, the only spiritual thing about it is me repeating "holy fuck" after I've cried my eyes out and wondered what's wrong with me. In that case, then yeah, I guess we can call it a spiritual awakening.

These "spiritual awakenings" happen when things start to pile up on my plate, and since we're taught to be gritty and tough, I tell myself I'm fine and that this overwhelm is normal.

My inner voice nags, "Suck it up. Life gets rough sometimes."

The contributors to these spiritual awakenings are the small things that we don't hear people talk about often enough in casual conversation, which is why we think we're the only ones experiencing certain problems.

Things like: how to deal with dad when he doesn't want you wearing "too much" makeup, or how you keep your hair down because it hides more of your acne.

Or the fears of virginity and troubles of sex.

Or that sticky "it's-not-a-relationship-but-we're-basically-dating" situation that's kept "hush-hush."

Teenagers don't openly talk about these issues or about how they feel. That is why I'm confessing the most private parts of my teenage life to you. I'm throwing the truth out there. I want to speak about the problems that girls are too scared to talk about in fear of being judged (I mean the shit that keeps us up at night. Everything from our weirdest and most private thoughts as a lonely girl, the happiest and the sickest feelings and the unforgiving insecurities that cause an ache in our chest).

That's why this isn't a success story.

This is a true story. One where I am broken, where I feel less of a woman due to unfortunate events. Now I'm writing to heal myself and find my voice again.

I'm hoping that my story connects to you in ways that will help heal, enlighten, and guide you when you feel alone and lost in this world. These are things I wish someone told me when I was young.

So, this is my way of reaching out to you:

my younger self,

my future children,

and other lost young girls.

If I could go back in time, I would tell my 16-year-old self this small golden nugget:

There are particular things you dream of, materialistic things and specific things: you want to be taller, smarter, prettier, thinner, richer, more popular, in a relationship. These are things that actually come from a place of insecurity and you do eventually get them. But, you aren't any happier with them. For the love of God, focus on happiness instead of those specific things. They will come within time and it won't even matter when they do because the times you were the happiest were the unplanned moments.

These were the moments you never even dreamed of, the moments you never thought could happen or were even originally wanted. Life surprises made you smile the brightest and laugh until your stomach burned with a roaring, warm energy that made you appreciate the world a bit more. Be present and cherish those kinds of memorable moments instead of trying to imagine or dream of them in the middle of the night.

Live the life you were blessed with because there's so much more to it than you think.

Trust the process.

Because believe me – becoming an adult doesn't mean you're smarter and richer and, therefore, have less problems.

It only gets harder, but it also comes with more chances to pick yourself back up and practice resilience, discipline, and build more mental tools that you can put in your pocket.

Ever since university started, the past few years have been a time of self-reflection and a collection of "How could I have not known that?" and "How did I let this happen?" All this self-reflection hit me hard. Now I want to share it with you.

I compiled the written pieces of my darkest and brightest days into a collection of digital media pieces that encapsulate my healing journey. My text messages were signs for help, my journal entries and poems captured my darkest thoughts, and Instagram was my podium where I declared speeches to help the mass and secretly, inspire myself to get better, do better, be better.

This is how I feel.

This book is funny. It's dark. It's a bit weird. It's extremely honest. It's full of colourful swearing (Sorry, mom). And I'm not apologetic about any of it (Sorry – I'm not trying to ruin the Canadian stereotype here.)

This is me handing you the password into my phone so that you can explore the online relationships I built and the photos and albums that collected dust overtime, read the conversations that kept me up at night, and observe the songs that helped me get through the toughest days as my playlist reflects my past and current journeys.

You may find that the insides of my phone might look a lot like yours. It's funny how we see parts of ourselves in the people we meet.

Make yourself comfortable. Have a seat.

In this book you will find parts to read when you are sad, when you are happy, when you need to laugh, when you feel broken, and when you need a sister to talk to.

My book is for the sad girls. So they can say, "Finally – I'm not the only one."

And my final wish is that, hopefully, my story will save a girl from going through what I did.

Just to feel pretty.