These are the times that everyone talks about. The time of their youth. Living young and living cheap. Pay check to pay check. Spending hours doing absolutely nothing but wasting time and developing cramps from sitting in one position from now until you're laid straight for the first time in your short life; and the lid is closed over your face. But quite frankly, that's not the point here. The point is that we have less than few moments to live and address our sadness and the scarcity of the solutions. We all dreamed of these times. Being seventeen with our friends and cars. With our reckless ideas and productions. Our curled hair and blackened skin. How everything we see sits quietly in our pupils, rolling around in circles, pacing back and forth creating black holes in our eyes. How the patterns on our skin will smooth out and be pulled tight as we try to find our identity in our stretched out finger prints. All the same. Our stamped identity on one paper with the black ink that turns blue after a while.
We'll all tie our childhood memories on the tips of our hair and on the ends of our noses. We'll drag them around until they become part of us and we stop being embarrassed about that fact. We bet on luck and lend out too much money. We'll tell our kids that an ice-cream cone was only a buck fifty and that the road north of the gas station was where we had our first kiss. Being seventeen and cheap is basically everything we've heard it would be. Calling our friends, but still feeling a little too lonely. Giving away our heart too quickly while trying to guard everything about it. Wanting everything but being too afraid of having it all. Giving too little or too much and only noticing the distances. Counting days and classes, texting mom or dad to "get your outta this joint." Ditching class and complaining of a failing grade. Caring too much but pretending to not notice. Being seventeen and cheap is everything and nothing it's cracked up to be.
Being seventeen and cheap is hard and simple.
God has spoken to my heart one too many times for me to question my humanity.
