.that teenage feeling.

i think i must be doing well, overall, in my life because i feel as new and dumb as eager as i did when i was thirteen.

i've been listening to music lately. i've been doing the kind of music listening that i used to do in my childhood bedroom, with the beige carpeting and mirrored closet doors. with pink bows stenciled on white walls (really) and magazine cutouts of kate winslet and tori amos scotch-taped to the walls. i had a million tea light candles and one window, and i used to hang my head out of it on summer evenings and wish i were somewhere outside. i used to play ani difranco so loudly that the neighbors could hear and there was no doubt in my mind that someday i would get out of that room, out of that house, and into the world.

i was an exceptionally miserable teenager, and that's a bold statement considering teenagers practically have a monopoly on misery in the western world. i didn't even do drugs or drink to deal with things. i did homework and cried. but i maintained a tenacious optimism the whole time i lived under my parents’ roof. my life may be dull now, i thought, excruciatingly so, but when i get through this i'll be thin and happy. i'll have friends and lovers, photography and sewing, independent transportation and no bedtime. i'll be the only person holding the remote control.

but it went beyond the simple desire for adulthood. i really thought that the world was magic and that i had a little bit of fairy dust inside. i thought i had the fucking golden ticket. i was going to write well and to live passionately, someday.

i don't know if college or my early twenties disappointed me. i've never been unhappy, but i can't say i've been satisfied for the last few years. employment has been shockingly elusive and it's not so easy to make friends as an adult. i have been in relationships with people who have loved me and trusted me and cooked me dinner, and it felt like having a ziploc freezer bag suctioned around my head.

i moved a lot. i switched jobs. i made friends. i ended relationships. i got cats. but that secret vault of hope and wonder seemed to have shriveled up. i wondered, for a while, if it was a vestigial organ in the cubical world, pointless and a waste of space. or maybe it was fleeting, like baby teeth, and reserves the cavity while we wait for adulthood to fill in. i didn't buy new music for several years, and i was sick of those old tori amos cds. somewhere between cashing the paychecks and paying the rent, i must have given up a little bit.

and lately, i've been turning the stereo up louder than apartment walls can handle. i've been begging friends for songs, for cds, for recommendations. i've been checking calendars at local venues and getting excited about up and coming shows. i've been jazzed to dance around my bathroom floor in my spandex running pants and sing into a beer bottle. i've been winking at passing drivers on my way to work. i've been talking to strangers. i've been crying at the chorus of bob dylan songs.

i guess a logical mind might think: insane. off her rocker. unstable. irrational.

but i sit behind a cubicle every day and make spreadsheets. i pay rent and car payments and insurance payments. i floss my teeth and eat my veggies. i am polished and buttoned down in black pants and pointy shoes. i dress up every day for work, and i blow-dry my hair. in one respect, in the most internal life i live: i would rather weep and sizzle like a raw wound.

i'm happy to admit i'm having a teenage revival, but i would rather have hope than stability. i would rather cramp and seethe and vomit into my own hair than sit on my couch another night watching tv reruns.