Youth at Large
Youth at Large
My defiant shouts are lost under the roar of a thousand vehicles on the overpass above me, my only listeners obscene symbols rendered in neon spray paint on the city's underbelly. I cry out my frustrations with the world, with the people who run it, with the inevitable brokenness I see in every heart, in every crannied nook. I scream against those who dared to hurt the people I love, who dared to pull them away from me a thousand times in a row. Yet maybe they pulled themselves away, and the thought gives me pause in my shouting. Silence echoes about me as I consider. No. I will not give on them. I will keep chasing them.
Standing beneath a manmade brand of thunder, I cry out for the inevitable heartbreak of love, for divorce and separation, for abuse and name-calling, for the devolution so common among new hearts, fresh and un-jaded from the darkness in the world. I cry for hindsight, the way it taunts us with countless, “You should have known better.” I spent all night scrolling through pictures on my phone, laughing at the way you smiled in old videos, hunting for a clue that this would happen, buried somewhere under those impossible grins.
I'm tired of sickness and loneliness, of the misery of being lost and adrift. I’m tired of returning to the same anchor forever. I want to pull it up, hoist the sails, tie up every rope. I'm filled up with mountains of teenage rebellion and nowhere to put it but the brittle air around me. I long to cultivate a new persona, one unafraid of challenging authority, being different, taking a stand and pursuing a life no one else told her to lead. To hell with conventional wisdom. I want to "stick it to man" with guns up and ready to fire, looking for a part of myself that can only exist in the full freedom of being able to "lose it" at any time.
Growing up changes things. It forced me to hold myself back, stifle my tongue, say, "yes ma'am," and "yes sir." Inside, I’m burning up, trying to picture the underpass where I can say what I think without fear of losing my job, home, family. Others less controlled than me require numerous people to hold them back, to keep them from doing something dumb. As for myself, self-control still reigns against my fleeting temperaments.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if these lunatics on the TV are people like me whose eleutheromania has grown so strong they're willing to sacrifice everything just to be unapologetically themselves. To stand in the streets decrying the pitiful state our nation has fallen to, our world has, our people have.
Even then, I'm not aiming for lunacy. I just want to stand in the middle of a street screaming at the sky and daring passing cars to bowl me over. I want to go to the sketchiest gas station in town, order an ICEE and see what happens. Walk into a crowded movie theater and shout “fire!” Minor incidents. Petty crimes. Untenable today.
Fearing the consequences, I pull back. I curb every unnatural tendency. I squish myself into a cardboard box, stapling it down to keep the lid on tight. I plaster on the smile, extol the virtues of lost love, show support for everything I don't believe in. I can’t blame it on a lack of free speech. I’m simply unwilling to field the sacrifice speaking one's mind entails.
Then, alone in the woods by myself, crowded next to the graffiti under an overpass, I loose it all to the world again, yelling until my voice is hoarse and my mind empty. It helps, for a time. It reminds me that these problems, though heavy, mean nothing to the trees, to the spray paint, to the hundreds of people who’ve passed by and added their “Jenny was here” to the concrete walls.
I'll be back next week, then next month, then next year, then not at all. It takes time to tame the young, to mold them into the status quo. Yet if pressed, any mind can be taught to forfeit youth and its defiance.
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