“Two Years Behind” by Anonymous Teen

When I left elementary school, I didn’t think much about my height. I was the right size for my age, healthy, and ready to face the craziness of middle school. I wasn’t exactly a towering figure, but I blended in with my classmates. There was comfort in that. But somewhere between childhood and adolescence, something strange happened, my growth quietly… stopped. I didn’t notice right away. After all, middle school was noisy and distracting. Between homework, awkward social conversations, and navigating friendships, I never payed much attention to my stunted height. But in seventh grade, during a normal checkup, the physician paused while scanning my growth chart. They looked at me, then at my parents, and then back at the paper. Their voice was calm, but it carried weight.

“You have something called Hashimoto’s disease,” they explained.

I tilted my head. Hashi-what?

The doctor went on, my immune system had been mistakenly attacking my thyroid gland, the tiny, butterfly-shaped gland in my neck responsible for producing hormones that control growth, metabolism, brain function, and muscle health. For at least two years, my thyroid hadn’t been producing enough of those hormones. I listened, nodding like I understood, even though inside my mind was stuck on one phrase, my growth has been stunted for two years. I actually laughed, partly out of disbelief, partly because the whole thing sounded like it was ripped from a fantasy book. How could my body just… stop growing? That wasn’t supposed to happen to real people. But the doctor’s words didn’t waver. I was twelve years old, living in the body of my ten-year-old self. At first, I treated it like a quirky fact about mem something I could joke about. “I’m just fun-sized!” I’d say. But over time, the jokes didn’t land the same way. The casual comments from others about how “young” I looked started to feel different. At ten, being called “cute” was fun. At twelve, when everyone else was moving into their teenage years and I still looked like a child, it became something else entirely, a reminder that I was behind.

It wasn’t just my appearance. I started to notice subtle differences in how I felt. I was tired more often, sometimes struggling to focus in class. There was a heaviness, not just in my body, but in the awareness that something invisible was wrong with me. The treatment was deceptively simple, a tiny pill, taken every single morning, for the rest of my life. No big procedures, no dramatic changes, just a quiet, permanent addition to my daily routine. But the first time I held that pill in my hand, I realized it wasn’t just medicine. It was a reminder that my life would forever include this condition. Hashimoto’s doesn’t have a cure. You can manage it, you can treat it, but it never goes away. I was twelve years old, and I was learning what it meant to live with something you can’t outgrow.

As the months passed and my medication began to work, my body slowly caught up. I shot up in height, my features matured, and I started to feel more like I fit in again. But the catch-up process was slow. I was late to puberty, late to my growth spurt, late to filling out the space I was meant to take up in the world. At first, I hated being late. There’s an unspoken pressure to keep pace with everyone around you, to hit the same milestones at the same time. Being behind felt like failing some invisible race. But somewhere along the way, I began to see things differently.

I realized that the people who truly mattered in my life didn’t care about the numbers on a growth chart or the date of my first growth spurt. They cared that I was showing up, that I was still myself, that I was learning to adapt. I also started to notice how many others live with invisible conditions, things you’d never guess just by looking at them. A classmate with migraines who carried medicine in her backpack. A friend’s sibling with diabetes who had to monitor their blood sugar constantly. People who, like me, had to live with something permanent, but didn’t let it define them.

Hashimoto’s gave me empathy I might not have developed otherwise. It made me more aware of the quiet battles people fight every day, the ones no one sees. Of course, there are still moments when I feel the weight of it. Every morning, that pill sits on my nightstand, a reminder that this isn’t something I’ll ever “get over.” And yet, it’s also a reminder that I can manage it, that I’ve made it this far, and I’ll keep going. Now, years later, I’m still technically “two years behind” in some ways. But I don’t mind anymore. My timeline isn’t broken, it’s just mine. I’ve learned that there’s no such thing as too late when it comes to becoming yourself. If anything, being behind taught me patience. It taught me resilience. And it taught me that growth isn’t just about inches and milestones, it’s about learning to accept where you are, even when it’s not where you expected to be.

I used to think my story was one of being delayed. Now, I think it’s one of catching up, not just in height or development, but in understanding who I am and what I can handle.

And honestly? I think that’s the kind of growth that matters most.