A Forseeable Future

I think I’m growing up and although everyone’s got to do it, I’m not so sure I want to. Whenever I meet my parent’s friends who knew me when I was “yea high” and “this big”, the ways they comment on how I look, on how I’ve changed, on how I’m pretty and tall, as if I was never those things before, well its comments like that make me want to find a grocery bag and wear it over my head for keeps because you don’t know me anymore. And yes I’ve gotten “big” because growing up tends to happen while you’re not looking to most people, all people, in time, over time. It’s unavoidable really. I remember when we used to be together alone in my room with the door shut when it didn’t matter that you were a boy and I wasn’t because we both knew nothing shady would happen. And my mother sometimes wonders if you ever tried to kiss me and sometimes I’ve told her yes just so she doesn’t think she knows me inside and out, even though if she really knew you as well as I did, she’d know that’s not who you are. I think these days you hang out behind school and smoke pot, dreaming of the day when you can go back to Germany and drink yourself drunk with all the other adults who would be considered underage kids over here. And sheltered, perfect me isn’t even sure she would know weed if someone waved it in front of her face and under her nose. And is that what growing older is supposed to be like? Coming of age just so we can do what we please with our bodies and our minds and our relationships now that we’re in control of ourselves. Is this what it will be like? Friends coming back from art camp in Italy decide that they can pull out cigarettes and smoke them too just because it helps define them as artsy hipsters even though they were before too, but without all that smoke and nonsense. And the boy you’ve known since preschool just went and did something with his girlfriend because he could and he wanted to and then he did, something that we learned in church was wrong until you’re married but he’s growing up and maybe that’s all part of it. The best friend since forever is growing spiritual limbs too big for her body and while she doesn’t know how to fit into them, I’m stuck observing her at church and wondering why I don’t have any. The girls at school are beginning to talk about the foreseeable future and how there’s only so much you can foresee but they’re all excited for it, and even though I am too, it feels like I’m the only one that’s afraid. Uncertainty scares me and I wish that I knew it scared you too because then we’d have something in common and then I wouldn’t feel like I have to hide it and put on my lying face that no one seems to recognize which is sometimes a surprise cause I wear it so often. Because I’ve lived my life according to the future and I’ve had all these plans of what I’m going to make of myself, just so I’ll have an answer for the question everyone keeps asking about what’s going to happen to me these next few years. But I’m not entirely sure and even though I have this plan all worked out in my mind that I use as a backup who even knows if it’ll happen the actual way I want it to because part of living is not knowing where your foot is going to fall next time you take a step. Now there are two kinds of people in this world, the ones who are scared to move their feet because they can’t see where they will land so they don’t and they miss out. And then there are the ones who are scared to move from where they are but they go ahead and do it anyways cause people are always saying that change is usually for the better and though I don’t actually always entirely fully believe that, it’s the second group who are the people who grow up and make something worthwhile of themselves. I hope that’s me.