Almost

So it seems I’ve gone and grown up in spite of myself.  It seems wrong to be cynical at 17.  17 is an almost age.  Almost old enough to vote.  Almost old enough to drive people around.  Almost an adult.  Almost. But not, quite, yet.

            So I’m almost There.  College.  Tattoos, if I were to feel like it, which I don’t.   The “best years of your life”.

It scares the s**t out of me.

There’s so much pressure not to waste them.  I want to do so many things; I want to be so many things.  I want to learn to cook from some grandmother in Tuscany.  I want to write my own grandmother’s biography.  I want to be a mother.  I want to have a one-night stand.  I want to decide if I believe in God.  I want to be remembered for something. I want to go on a road trip.  I want to have an adventure.

And as I think about all the things I want to do I wonder if I’ve done enough.  I’ve taken this path I don’t remember choosing.  I am the straight A student.  The suck up who spends lunches at various club meetings.  I can’t help wondering whether I missed something, whether I want it.  To get the grades to go to an Ivy League College to get a good job to marry an attractive husband to become a glorified soccer mom.

I’m so busy going through the motions that I’ve lost track of the impulses that make me feel alive.  To go on nighttime walks with no destination music blasting.  To go to concerts and splash around at the beach.  It seems surviving had gotten in the way of living or at the very least adrenaline.

And here at 17 I feel like screaming or running or jumping into ice-cold water.  Wakeup you f*****g idiot live before it passes by you by and you realize what you’ve missed.  I should have drank more. I should have tried smoking pot.  I should have had more sex.  I should have cut class. I should have made more interesting friends with that unmistakable lusty passion and aura of not giving a s**t what everyone thinks.

But maybe I shouldn’t have.

Almost old enough to decide.  Almost old enough to know.  Almost.  But not, quite, yet.

Reviews

[sirenribbon@thehptshirt..]

Its like Alice met up for duet with Stevie Nicks for"Edge of Seventeen". Great personal descriptive without being complicated and without direction. You seem like a great person that has a lot to offer yourself and the world. I feel you have a combination of feminine knowledge with feminine ambition. You cant go wrong. Cheers