On Growing Up | Teen Ink

On Growing Up

February 23, 2015
By Anonymous

If you do not stop to look around once in awhile, you will blink and be old and grey. I say this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart; I feel as if the day I write this is longer than the rest of my childhood. Logically, I know it is not; my previous endeavors span out beyond me, a past littered with childhood cliches and empty promises. The next two years are supposed to be the prime of my life. As a junior and senior, I should create memories that will last me a lifetime. Parents always say that high schoolers are living their glory days, and we snort and say “I certainly hope not” and that’s that. But truly, these last few years of beauty and discovery are the most special moments of our lives.

I know that nothing will ever compare to having my first slow dance beside a bonfire, late at night, with my boyfriend’s sweet accent tickling my ear. I know I will spend forever searching for another best friend like mine, someone who will wear white dress shirts and underwear with me, drinking the nights away. I will sleep with my husband each night and long to hear her maniacal laughter once more, feel her wine-warmed limbs fall heavily across my body and smell her perfume. I know that I will go out to dinner and hold small talk about the upcoming elections and remember days spent cursing, writing poetry and painting in all hours of the night. I realize someday at the opera, legs crossed tightly, I will remember going to Rocky Horror Picture Show and dancing in front of the crowd, showing everyone my underwear and kissing the actors.

I am so scared that I will not remember someday.

Someday, I will be bored consistently. I will sit at the same desk and watch the same people filter in and out, watch days grow shorter and nights grow longer, and I will lose myself. I will forget the short dress wearing, red lipstick sporting, teacher sassing, ink-dipped teenage girl for an adult. I will stop dying my hair and let it grow mousy brown and let myself grow fat and stupid. I will no longer be clever.

I am now, though. I am clever enough to see the error in my parents’ ways, in my teachers’ ways. I will not let myself be so caught up in trivial pursuits; I will not conform to societal expectations. If I get pregnant, I will deliver the baby and drown myself afterwards, just on principle. I will make a point to keep people guessing. I will cloak myself in the night sky, sip on people’s curiosity and leave before they can know my last name. I will keep aliases in my pocket like spare change and hand them out, I will stand on bridges and ask people not to jump, I will smoke under streetlamps and sing “I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet.”

I will be an enigma, until I am all grown up. If you aren’t, what is the point?



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