Interview: Anonymous Teen - "K"

Me: What does the word “guilt” mean to you?

K: It means you feel bad. 

Me: That's it?
K: That's it.

Me: When do you feel guilty?

K: When you do something bad and people make you feel bad about it.

Me: Can you recall a specific event that you would take back or do over that made you guilty?

K: I lie to my family about believing in the God.

Me: Whose opinion matters to you?

K: My mom’s and my sister’s.

Me: When you feel guilty, is it because you have let someone down?

K: Yes. That is the only occasion I feel guilty.

Me: Who? Yourself? Or another person?

K: My mom usually. My sister sometimes, but she is much more understanding so not as often.

Me: What does the Atonement mean to you?

K: Redemption.

Me: When someone ‘judges’ you or tells you what you’re doing is wrong, how do you feel?

K: Angry, and I want to do it more just to spite them. Except my family they just make me feel sad.

Me: Angry and Sad?

K: Yeah. Both.

Me: Are you happy with whom you are as a person?

K: Yes. Mostly, I’m content because the things I do make me happy, but then they don't make my family happy and I feel bad about that, but I wish that I didn't feel this way.

Me: What would you change? Anything? Why?

K: My communication skills with others, and I would like to be better at sharing my feelings. I just feel like I can't say certain things, like I'm not allowed to feel a certain way.

Me: Do you consider anything “unforgivable”?

K: I don’t think anything is really unforgivable as long as the person being bad is honestly remorseful and does change.

Me: When someone lets you down, how do you feel? What do you say to them?
K: I usually feel disappointed, and I just tell them what specifically they did to make me feel that way. And together we try to come up with solutions so that everyone is happy, unless they do not want to make things better, then I just let it go. I try to realize that you can’t change people and you either accept them or you don’t. If you don’t then just stop spending time with them because they will just make you feel worse. It's painful with people you care about though, because sometimes you feel like things are too far gone and you want them to go back to being good again.