Awkward Teens

You travel in packs, hungry as wolves, starving for identity. You share sticks of gum, ipod earbuds, and tragically romantic secrets. You still look, wide-eyed, at the world around you, yearning to seem wise, anxious about your own vulnerability.

I envy you your sense of immortality. You approach the world relatively undamaged, yet certain of your own dramatic history. You haven't yet learned to question the importance of your wounds. Instead, you declare them proudly to the world, penned in black Sharpie on your jeans, your backpack, your Converse All-Stars. You walk the world with your strange and beautiful fashion disasters, the rebellious nose-piercing paired with the 1940's Maryjanes so akin to your great-grandmother's. You pin political insignias and smart-assed slogans on your hat or your backpack. You sneer in derision at the commonplace world around you, the commonplace people (like me, someone who creates the events that you proudly tout as being "anti-establishment" or "alternative"). You know, without question, that you are destined for extraordinary things. You know, without question, that the it's only a matter of time until the rest of the world realizes how exceptional you are, too.

You struggle for breath, your individuality like oxygen in space: so simultaneously elusive and critical. You are so certain of each love in your life, loving for all you're worth, without hesitation or remorse. And, when it ends, you wallow unabashedly in your exquisite pain.

You are distinct without standing apart. You are alike without pandering to the desires of others. You are waiting for life to strike you as you turn the next bend in the river. And you are ready to strike back.

You are desperation.

And you make me smile, you make me remember, you make me thankful for who and where and what I am.