There is so much snow on the ground.
All I can think about is being 16. Although I don't remember being necessarily happy back then, there is something about it I just can't seem to shake.
I was a sophomore in high school who wore too much mascara and filled in my eyebrows with Anastasia Dip Brow. It was kind of awesome for what it was.
I think about the friends I had, and where they are now. All of the people who weren't able to make it out of that barred-out town, who are still God knows where doing meth and DMing me on Instagram when they get fucked up.
I have this subtle heartache in the back of my mind lately. An ache for the fact that I was able to subsequently get out and somehow others weren't. And to be clear, I grew up in an affluent town in an affluent county just 30 minutes from the 3rd largest city in the country. There is nothing tragic about my life or the lives of these people I cry about. The tragedy is merely abstract, and I'm still not entirely convinced it's not just all in my head.
I will never forget befriending the new kid in 7th grade after he complimented my Adidas Superstars when the popular kids were bullying me, asking why I wore my bowling shoes to school (lowkey they were right for that). Anyway, this new kid—he told me about how much he hated school and how he was going to drop out of high school so he could be an artist. I was so scared of authority back then that I told him that he needed to graduate at least so that he wouldn't get in trouble. So cute of little 12-year-old me.
Anyway, after years of high school and falling in and out of lust and friendship with this new boy, I ended up graduating high school early. He was one of the only people who believed that I would actually do it. And when I got my first apartment my sophomore year of college, he came over for a party we were having. We sat in my bedroom while an art school house party screamed on in the background, and he looked at me like I held the moon. He reminded me of that moment back in 7th grade and acknowledged the irony of me being the one to leave high school early. He told me how proud he was of me. I had gotten everything 16-year-old me had ever wanted but never knew how to put into words.
I have no clue where he is now. Last I heard, tweaking out somewhere in the burbs. My heart aches for what he could've been. Strangely though, I don't think it aches for the version of him that exists now, or because I necessarily want him in my life, but it aches for the new kid in 7th grade music class who was nice to me when I needed a friend. To the 16-year-old boy that worked at the local ice cream shop and would bring pints of my favorite flavor to my house in the middle of the night after his shift. To the 18-year-old boy who damn near cried for me when he saw the life I had made for myself when I finally "got out."
He deserved to make it out as well, and if not physically, then he should've at least been able to live his dreams too.
I wonder if it is just a symptom of the place, part of the drill. Some people "get lucky" and others stay back and do kratom. I figure my "luck" wasn't even my own doing either. I accredit everything I am to the mentors that allowed me to see myself beyond the age of 16.
I'm revisiting this now in May. I now know how severely I was going through it. But I stand on my word.
I know that the experiences of me and the new boy are not unique, and there are a million other versions of him and I across the world, living in similar realities, both at 23 and 16. I refuse to chalk it up to "America under capitalism" or "the ups and downs of youth" because that is too systematically biblical. I really do hope that he is okay wherever he is. He might even read this. And if he is, I'm sorry, both for airing you out and for whatever you are going through.
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