"This is..." poem
This is 15
15 is the rough branches of life scraping along your skin, knowing that you have a long way to go before the end of the harsh jungle of adolescence but realizing that if you stop now you’ll emerge from a forest into a wasteland of broken dreams. It is knowing that you have great potential but still only managing to scrape through, and recognising that you are going to end up with scrapes and bruises.
15 is being grateful for friends who can support you and who are battling the bleak abyss of a failed future themselves and lapping up every last drop of distraction that can dilute the feeling of utter hopelessness when looking down the road of life.
15 is when every birthday candle wish is “an extra hour of sleep.”
At 15 you routinely skip the seemingly frivolous act of sleeping in favor of acts that give immediate rewards, like monitoring the internet, reading a book or finishing one more page of homework, only to deeply regret your actions the next day.
15 is the very beginning of a life monitored through test scores and credit scores. It is knowing that, from this point forward, everything you do can change the course of your life, and it is knowing that doing something right will reward you with little more than a pat on the back and doing something wrong could brand you as untouchable for the rest of your life.
It is liking your mind and hating your stamina. You are forever confused as to why you only reach maximum efficiency after a shot of caffeine and staying awake for 6 hours, and you wonder how you could have transitioned from consistently waking up at 4 o’clock to having to drag your legs of lead out of bed to the sound of an alarm.
15 is becoming an adult more and more each day; the excuse of innocence becomes less and less acceptable everyday as people realize that you have, in fact, committed this crime before and you do know the repercussions. However, it also heralds new freedoms as the rules that apply to adults begin to apply to you.
At 15 your tolerance for “shovel-ware” media hits rock bottom. You expect the same quality of media that you see your parents take for granted and you realize that the shows you held as sacred heralds of comedic genius are truly little more than someone having a bad day to the tune of a laugh track.
It is 10 years of the public school system teaching you that the going ons of others truly don’t affect you in the slightest. It becomes apparent that a healthy level of apathy can avoid you much of the perils of high school you have read about in books and scene in movies.You realize that, to traverse a world so complex, choosing what battles to fight is as important as knowing how to fight them.
15 is full of fleeting moments of an impending sense of doom as you realize that the world you will be thrust into is neither the world your parents survived nor the utopian society that their parents predicted. It is knowing that, weather you like it or not, in four years time you will be in the midst of a world evolving faster than it’s inhabitants and that keeping pace with it is not only something you must do, but something no previous generation has had to do.
It is staring up into the endless sky of the future, both denying and eagerly accepting that one chapter of your life is drawing to a close, and not fully understanding what that even means. Surely graduating high school won’t instantly make you another person, but it appears to make everything around you instantly change. Nothing like that has ever happened to you yet, and you aren't sure how you should feel about it.
At 15 the troubles that plagued your 10 year old self seem non-existent, and while you now have the wisdom to know your current troubles will pass with time as well, it makes them no less irksome.
At 15 you still hold on to the dreams you had when you were younger. All the ideas you had about what you were going to do with your life. You know they can all come true but you also realize how much effort they would take; you aren't sure if you really want to be an space walking, crime fighting, firefighting, teaching, molecule discovering, teleporter inventing, fictional book writing, video game designing, spaceship engineering, biologist. It’s not that you’ve grown lazy or scared, just that you have realized that when your kindergarten teacher said you could grow up to be anything, not everything. You are going to have to choose what you want to do with your life, and that is terrifying.
It is accepting that time, and your age, are moving forward whether you like it or not. You know that things are only going to get harder, but you think that you might just be able to manage that.
This is 15. This is me. Now.
15 is the rough branches of life scraping along your skin, knowing that you have a long way to go before the end of the harsh jungle of adolescence but realizing that if you stop now you’ll emerge from a forest into a wasteland of broken dreams. It is knowing that you have great potential but still only managing to scrape through, and recognising that you are going to end up with scrapes and bruises.
15 is being grateful for friends who can support you and who are battling the bleak abyss of a failed future themselves and lapping up every last drop of distraction that can dilute the feeling of utter hopelessness when looking down the road of life.
15 is when every birthday candle wish is “an extra hour of sleep.”
At 15 you routinely skip the seemingly frivolous act of sleeping in favor of acts that give immediate rewards, like monitoring the internet, reading a book or finishing one more page of homework, only to deeply regret your actions the next day.
15 is the very beginning of a life monitored through test scores and credit scores. It is knowing that, from this point forward, everything you do can change the course of your life, and it is knowing that doing something right will reward you with little more than a pat on the back and doing something wrong could brand you as untouchable for the rest of your life.
It is liking your mind and hating your stamina. You are forever confused as to why you only reach maximum efficiency after a shot of caffeine and staying awake for 6 hours, and you wonder how you could have transitioned from consistently waking up at 4 o’clock to having to drag your legs of lead out of bed to the sound of an alarm.
15 is becoming an adult more and more each day; the excuse of innocence becomes less and less acceptable everyday as people realize that you have, in fact, committed this crime before and you do know the repercussions. However, it also heralds new freedoms as the rules that apply to adults begin to apply to you.
At 15 your tolerance for “shovel-ware” media hits rock bottom. You expect the same quality of media that you see your parents take for granted and you realize that the shows you held as sacred heralds of comedic genius are truly little more than someone having a bad day to the tune of a laugh track.
It is 10 years of the public school system teaching you that the going ons of others truly don’t affect you in the slightest. It becomes apparent that a healthy level of apathy can avoid you much of the perils of high school you have read about in books and scene in movies.You realize that, to traverse a world so complex, choosing what battles to fight is as important as knowing how to fight them.
15 is full of fleeting moments of an impending sense of doom as you realize that the world you will be thrust into is neither the world your parents survived nor the utopian society that their parents predicted. It is knowing that, weather you like it or not, in four years time you will be in the midst of a world evolving faster than it’s inhabitants and that keeping pace with it is not only something you must do, but something no previous generation has had to do.
It is staring up into the endless sky of the future, both denying and eagerly accepting that one chapter of your life is drawing to a close, and not fully understanding what that even means. Surely graduating high school won’t instantly make you another person, but it appears to make everything around you instantly change. Nothing like that has ever happened to you yet, and you aren't sure how you should feel about it.
At 15 the troubles that plagued your 10 year old self seem non-existent, and while you now have the wisdom to know your current troubles will pass with time as well, it makes them no less irksome.
At 15 you still hold on to the dreams you had when you were younger. All the ideas you had about what you were going to do with your life. You know they can all come true but you also realize how much effort they would take; you aren't sure if you really want to be an space walking, crime fighting, firefighting, teaching, molecule discovering, teleporter inventing, fictional book writing, video game designing, spaceship engineering, biologist. It’s not that you’ve grown lazy or scared, just that you have realized that when your kindergarten teacher said you could grow up to be anything, not everything. You are going to have to choose what you want to do with your life, and that is terrifying.
It is accepting that time, and your age, are moving forward whether you like it or not. You know that things are only going to get harder, but you think that you might just be able to manage that.
This is 15. This is me. Now.