Nineteen - Blog Posts

btlk-like

3 years ago

Growing Up

You are three asking your mother when will you be four / You are four and full of life and cartwheels / You are five and love everything other than the unbearably flashy rhinestone dress / You are six and scrawny which also translates to being an easy target to bullies / You are six and you befriend the guy who locked you in the playground because he wanted to see a little girl cry but instead, you climbed over a wall three times higher than you / You laughed in his face as his friends ran away, scared of a little girl kicking their asses / Why am I always small? Why do I always have to be strong? / You are seven and great at skating / You are seven and you used the word upside-down when reading Tom Sawyer and you are so proud of yourself for knowing it / You are eight and love life / You are eight and you love life / You are eight and love life / You are eight and you love books and travel and that one time you walked out of the train station when dawn was just breaking / You saw the prettiest sky of your life; a sky so blue and so dark and so light that it stole the drowsiness right from your eyes / I know you still wake up early in hopes that the sky will one day walk down the memory lane with you / You are nine and you swear the house is so big you will get lost here / You imagine playing hide and seek for hours on end here; swear that you almost forgot where the rooms go / You are ten and the house is not so big anymore / It is full of life and things / You are always somewhere / There is a summer there I spent visiting the hospital / I don’t quite remember now / Hospitals sometimes start to feel like home now / Eleven is a happy blur: I love everyone and everyone loves me / Eleven is happiness: I knew everyone and everyone admired me / Twelve is blue and black; there were moments I lived through that I never knew I would miss / Thirteen is a lot of carrying friendships I don’t like / Fourteen is a lot of sighs of relief; of friendships left behind and the year of growing before everything goes to shit / Fifteen is a lot of fun and not remembering things that hurt us; things that haunt us / Fifteen is fun and shenanigans with newfound friends you like enough / Sixteen is hard work / Sixteen is a lot of fighting and sometimes fun / Sixteen is for the bitch face and cuts / Sixteen is a lot of wondering what you’ve become / Sixteen is fake friends and smiles which will ruin you / Sixteen is the year of silly crushes on boys who think the world revolves around them / Sixteen is a lot of “I am almost an adult” / Sixteen is for parties and the time your life was as perfect as those IT kids in the movies / Sixteen is a lot of cold air on your face and feeling this city become home / Seventeen is for survival / Seventeen is for keeping your head down / Seventeen is for breakdowns / Seventeen is the time you snap and take a stand / Seventeen is having your own back / Seventeen is very alone but that’s okay / Seventeen is a lot of cussing and spiraling / Seventeen is for the nightmares / Seventeen is for closures / Seventeen is survival / Seventeen is for the big fuck you which is never said / Seventeen is for winning / Seventeen is for winning / Seventeen is so many goddamn wins / Seventeen is a big fuck you that escapes as a smile / Eighteen is relief / Eighteen is the growing up that sneaks up on you / Eighteen is acceptance / Eighteen is so much happiness / Eighteen is how everything is okay and everything is home / Eighteen is the year of being childish and loving it / Eighteen is a lot of love and happiness / Eighteen is a goddamn dream / Eighteen is doing everything you love and telling it to its face / Eighteen is dreams come true / Eighteen is growing up and growing up and being okay with it / Eighteen leaves with patience / Eighteen is a lot of learning to stay / Eighteen is fading yet forever / I am always going to be eighteen in some parts /