Sixteen is a performance for an unknown audience. You mustn't stray from your lines, though, for you will be snagged by the edge of the crook that yanks you behind the curtains and this is completely unacceptable-- you need to keep up your reputation. You stop eating candy, cake, desserts; you miss your innocence yet embrace education encompassing everything because you want to know everything; you need to know everything. At sixteen, you are merely a pond full of a small amount of water. Your life is still growing, gaining more momentum as fish and frogs and dragonflies come to feast in your environment of success. Your fears are causing ripples to pour your water over the sides, losing the sustenance of life. You are constantly stricken with bright fear that simultaneously orchestrates a ringing thunder. It is calling you into the future. This is Sixteen.
Sixteen is not understanding friends. You don’t understand how other people think, you often don’t really want to because, in reality, the only friends you tell yourself you really need are inside your brain. You want to eliminate all people from roads because they cannot drive as well as you, a perfectly teen. You love people as much as you hate them, and you are never satisfied from any relationship. You ask yourself everyday: Why do I have friends? Why do I need them? The answer is you don’t need them, yet you do. You need self dependency, individuality, discipline even to thrive. However, humans inevitably need social interaction to maintain sanity. This is another mask you must hold on to in the play in order to keep up the act of stability and normalcy. But you ask: why do you have to be normal? Shouldn’t your friends see who you “really” are? And who are your real friends? Will you ever not think about the paranoia of loneliness under the sanctuary of your bed sheets? Even in public, sitting amongst your ‘closest friends,’ chatting emptily-- why do you feel so lonely?
Sixteen is relapsing over and over again in loneliness. You wonder if that will ever change, if you will ever marry, if you will ever have a stable best friend. The “reassurance” that everyone else can relate to this is not comforting, it is alarming.
Sixteen is having an armour of confidence 99% of the time; the other 1% is a state of total warfare. All the worst monsters and tricks of light come bursting from your enemy’s sleeves to attack you. These battles always get bloody.
It is connecting history's battles to the civil war inside: the battlefield completely destroying your brain, absorbing the damage within the walls of your bloody skull, inside the commander. The ears and eyes are the enemy spies; your ears are for detecting, but sometimes you don't want to know what's really going on; your eyes are deceiving for they manipulate the truth through perception; and your words are bombers, but they hurt you more than the invisible enemy. When that battle is over, you pass a mirror and see someone you don't want to be, someone you want to shred to pieces, someone you want to change. At sixteen you do change it, and another battle is reborn.
Sixteen is feeling like a cartoon character with steam billowing out of your ears because of the pure frustration fueled by people, by their expectations, by their lack of understanding. It is not that you are unloved or unwanted, though, you are simply unseen.
Sixteen is despising those moments of despair hit you on the way home from school like a freight train. The captain comes out to inspect the roadkill, your carcass, and ties your limp, bloody body to the cool metal tracks to run you over again. It can happen sitting in you room, suddenly glancing in the mirror and the walls on your body will constrict around you like a snake until you feel like you can't breathe and your brain is making you dizzy and the world is spinning out of control and you cannot find anything to grab onto to steady you. You are surprised and angry and stressed and frustrated at your lack of composure and too emotional to understand or to do anything to fix this state of instability.
At sixteen you leave the house feeling tired, ready, and nervous. You didn't do a homework assignment, you put on your costume as you trek to school. The number of people you feel you need to impress is just as inconsistent as your moods (There is something deeply wrong with the sixteen year old with actual domination over their emotions, you see).
Sixteen is slowly revolving around school. Entirely. You are forced to drink its poisonous cough syrup everyday and tell yourself it’s for the better of your sickly being, but really, it kills you everyday.
Sixteen is seeing how much you need to do, how many responsibilities you have but staring off into space for hours, overwhelmed with the enormity of it. It is no longer a minor ripple of crippling fear sucking the life out of you but a tsunami shackling you to a stone wall of infinite terror. It is when you allow procrastination to invade your cell walls and membranes and travel all the way to the nucleus and take control. He is the captain now.
Sixteen is relying on music to be your support, on books to teach you and plan your escape from the stage, and poems to inspire because you want to write your own script.
Sixteen is being shown little positives everyday by God.
Sixteen is finding such deep fascination at words strung into diamond necklaces and earrings for others to see, displayed throughout bookstore windows for your simple enjoyment. You love school because you love how much differently you think after just one day.
Sixteen is exhilaration slapping your face with a smile as you travel down a mountain in the dark at 30, 40 miles an hour on a piece of plastic. You feel the wind on your face and look up at the sky sprinkling heavy snow across the vast slopes. You wake the next day and snowboard again in the wintery gray light. Your body hurts but you love it. You sit, laying down, on the mountain, watching snow dance in the air next to your best friend. Then, at sixteen, you smile, thinking, This is why people live.
Sixteen is meeting Coach Schmitt. She inspires you with her devilish wand, forcing upon you immense physical and mental pain, but she understands, as do you, that she tortures you to make you stronger. She conditions you every other day, yells at your suffering corpse, making your body hurt, but you love it. You get stronger; you are stronger.
Sixteen is playing lacrosse everyday after school because “lax is life.” You live for your lacrosse family: you eat, cry, fail, succeed with them. The passion of the sport is enough to connect your family together, and it is stronger than blood. You form an inseparable, indestructible, impressive bond with these girls that you thought only existed within the fantastical realm of plays and movies. You see this family, this team improve everyday and you can feel yourself improve everyday. You launch balls on shots and live for those moments when Schmitt screams, “You are such a beast! That shot is nasty!” You feel satisfaction roll down in sweaty drips and drops on your skin. Then, at sixteen, you stop and think, with that sly smile, This is why people live.
Sixteen is not understanding life, but thinking you do.
Sixteen is living at the library and being a regular at Starbucks. You read instead of doing homework (but only sometimes), you spend a dangerous amount of money on frappuccinos you use to fuel your motivation. You overstudy and understudy, you learn, do, move just to please the masked audience, the seats of darkness awaiting your act. The audience is made, you see, of ominous colleges, teachers, parents, peers you compete with, but mainly, mainly you can feel the presence of the greatest judge: you.
Sixteen is realizing that all your dreams could come true. You realize you have the capability to wave a little magic, work a little harder, and transform the abstract into the tangible.
Sixteen is having rain slam into the windows of your house and tapping your shoulder for attention. You run outside to greet the rain, drenched in satisfaction. You sit on your porch, watching God release the mighty phenomenon of a thunderstorm. You want lightning to strike, to feel its power. You sit in a state of infinite waiting. You are very serene, very still. You smile, but you are not entirely sure why; it is the overwhelming strength and power hammering into you, drowning those fears from that miniscule pond. See, that pond is still growing; you know you are an infinitely small puddle of the world, but you can see that one day, you will become and ocean. This is why, instead of cowering to every storm, you always, always think, Bring it on.