I was a very angry teenager. Suprised right? Totally. And you should be, considering what a calm, rational and down to Earth person I am now. But I wasn't always like this. Oh no. Once I was problematic for my elders. I defied them and did what I wanted. Thankfully for me all I really wanted was not to go to school, and to be outside. That's mostly what I did. I spent a lot of time in various parks in Irvine, dodging police and the Irvine Association (not exactly police, but local authority sanctioned by the owners, managers, and powers-that-be that run Irvine), or inside in front of a computer wrapped up in some primitive digital fantasty or another. By the time I was legally free of adults telling me how to live my life I was completely used to failing to live a functional one.
Man I was a dumb teenager.
So says the part of me that thinks I should live like people around me. I see my mom, my roommate, many of my friends, most of the people I know really, managing to squeeze themselves into a life that looks entirely uncomfortable and akward. People trying to live in clothes made for someone else, and the painful molding of their own flesh and psyches to fit a shape that never fits all of them.
I remember watching them hack off the limbs of their passions, and dancing dancing dancing to ignore the screams. Those were powerful screams, and some of them made for the soundtracks of beautiful evenings.
So says the part of me that has fought long and hard for the right to be whatever the fuck I want to be. Or not be. A childish part maybe? I don't know. It's not a part I want to give up. Something in me considers that key to my definition of self, and if I let it go I have failed. We give up so much in life, are we stronger for holding on to something? Or have I missed the joke?
Says the part of me that remembers listening to Buddhists speak of Zen at 13. Letting go is the only strength. All pain flows from resistance. That which bends does not break.
And I have broken many, many times.
It's time again to wonder - who am I now?
Man I was a dumb teenager.
So says the part of me that thinks I should live like people around me. I see my mom, my roommate, many of my friends, most of the people I know really, managing to squeeze themselves into a life that looks entirely uncomfortable and akward. People trying to live in clothes made for someone else, and the painful molding of their own flesh and psyches to fit a shape that never fits all of them.
I remember watching them hack off the limbs of their passions, and dancing dancing dancing to ignore the screams. Those were powerful screams, and some of them made for the soundtracks of beautiful evenings.
So says the part of me that has fought long and hard for the right to be whatever the fuck I want to be. Or not be. A childish part maybe? I don't know. It's not a part I want to give up. Something in me considers that key to my definition of self, and if I let it go I have failed. We give up so much in life, are we stronger for holding on to something? Or have I missed the joke?
Says the part of me that remembers listening to Buddhists speak of Zen at 13. Letting go is the only strength. All pain flows from resistance. That which bends does not break.
And I have broken many, many times.
It's time again to wonder - who am I now?
toothpickmoe:
While the usual sense of "fun" is not what one would normally attribute to that sort of personal journey, ti can be quite exhilarating.