The Edge of Seventeen.

When I was ten, Sundays meant drives to the beach and trying to find starfish from the decks of boats. They meant sunshine and disney movies till I fell asleep on the couch at 10pm. This year, I’ve been listening to Lorde and reading poems about how life is fleeting and childhood is even more fleeting and being on the edge of seventeen has made me want to write about it too. Lately I’ve been reminiscing, thinking about the things I don’t write about - the visceral moments we don’t even realise are special until they pass us by, and the ones I romanticise too much. Seventeen was a year filled with love and friends, drives and getting just the right amount of drunk, kisses under the moonlight but also laying in bed doing absolutely nothing. I’m sinking into this feeling of not knowing what’s coming, into the inherent sadness that comes with endings. Sometimes, I want to be ten years old again. I want to fall asleep thinking about the characters in my bedtime stories and I want to look forward to the 30 minute drive to the beach, to collecting seashells and swinging to the clouds. I think about the moments that have made me realise I do end up remembering every little detail about people. As much as I love writing about endings and the stars, I want to know why you like red roses or why you don’t, why your favourite movie is the one you watched with someone you love, I want to hear about regrets and the last things people would say to someone they’ve lost if they could. I want to sink into the feeling of talking about the universe at two am like nothing else matters, the feeling of writing about someone for the first time and, like most of the things I hold on to, I want it to last forever. I want to string metaphors together. About the things we laugh at now that meant the world to us a few years ago, and the ones we’re infinitely hopeful for. I think this might be my attempt to write about the in-between. I know that there are a lot of hopeful stories I’ve read that I want to be true. In a decade, I want Sundays to mean sunlight falling in through the curtains at nine am and three little dogs napping by the door. Fields of tulips or New York City or just, all the things we dream of. I want to look back on the times I’ve gotten calls from friends and they’ve talked about how wonderful it’d be to exist in a life that is ours and I think that’s what I’m most looking forward to when we live that life, knowing that as cheesy as it sounds, if it’s meant to be, it’ll be. There is this weird limbo that is almost comforting to exist in - the feeling of holding on just because you won’t be able to soon, of knowing something won’t last, not even close to forever, but lingering in it anyway, and I think that makes it a little more special. I want to sit under patches of sunshine and make bad paintings but be proud of them anyway, I want to bake chocolate chip cookies every weekend even though I burn them a little bit and I can’t really bake. I want to tell the people I love that I love them so much it becomes a habit and I want to find people who see me and know they like me already, people I will remember forever. I think most of all, this is a sappy reminder/realisation that we’ll all be okay, because the friends I care most about have spent a lot of time convincing me we will be. I want to live till I have enough stories to tell because, in the words of Logan Huntzberger, you can live a hundred years without having lived a single moment.