Teenagers

As a teenager, I was a complete ass.  For a second, I had potential to be a good person.  I was raised in a good family with strong values and a solid basis in religion.  What happened?  I doubted who I was for just a second, and that second lasted forever. 

I know who I want to be, but I am seemingly incapable of putting myself there.  I am not the person I want my children to see, because I don’t live life with passion and creativity.  I am a terrible wife, because I do not care about the institution of marriage, and I got married for all the wrong reasons.

I want to start over.  Reset.  Restart.  Rewind.  Is it too late?   When is my turn over?  I look out into a sea of young faces every day - people who are beginning this journey of life, just starting to find out who they are as independent entities of the world.  They will soon take the first step of separating themselves from their parents and creating their own life.  I am irrationally jealous of them.  I want to go back.  I want to make different decisions which will alter the outcome of my life.  I want to be someone who I am not.   I have lost all sense of my self.  When does the time come when I am too old to change the course of my life?  I am ready for fundamental change. 

I have known that this life is not the life I want to leave for too long, so why don’t I change it?  Why don’t I have the courage to stop that which is not good for me?  Or maybe I simply lost the ability to understand what is good for me.  Perhaps this is where I belong?  But I don’t  believe in predestination.  I have free will – I should be able to choose my life.  My inability to affect my own life is a joke.  It seems that I am only good at being young.  I like the wisdom of advanced age; I detest the physiological accompaniments. 

I would rather be older than younger … mentally.  (And perhaps without all the neuroses.)  I see the world in a much better way today than I did as a senior in high school.  I was truly delusional then, just as all 17 year olds tend to be.  Young people don’t see all the damage coming.  They see around the road blocks and just plow through as though it won’t hurt when your head hits the brick wall. 

My head hurts so bad.  I have hit the brick wall so many times that I am bloody and bruised and skeptical of every thing and every one.  I am not where I belong.  I feel that with every single fiber of my being.  But it doesn’t matter, because here I am.  I’ll be lonely, but I hope I’ll be okay. 

I feel like once I’m dead, my children will read all of the obnoxious and painful and stupid and spiteful things I’ve written and be hurt by them.   Ideally, before I die, I will burn my paper and expunge my hard drive.  But if I don’t get around to it, try to remember that people tend to write when they are in pain, so it’s only the pain that shows.  When I’m happy, I have nothing to say – nothing to write.  Writing is my catharsis; I hope it doesn’t end up being someone else’s pain.