This Is You

A routine drive around town will reveal those who will wave frantically at you, starving for the smiles and nods that you’re just as desperate to give. Others simply gaze at the shadows you cast, almost absently, and simply mouth your name, not willing to part with any of the precious emotion or energy that their teenage bodies house. Nevertheless, they are aware of your name, aware of your presence, aware of you. It’s something strange, to have so many different people say your name and to be powerless to do the same for so many of them in return. Unawareness is forgivable, but it’s not even that, because you want to know, even long to do so. Such is the cost of your newfound relevancy. There are degrees to it, shades of it, but you can’t deny its weight, its company, when they, some nameless, none faceless, crowd around you or rush past you, wanting, fearing nothing more than your attention. They change by the week, by the day, by the hour even, in stature and personality, some juggling guises because that’s what it means to exist at 14, others painfully honest, because such is all that they can, ever could, and if they’re fortunate enough, ever will be able to muster. You try to recall what it was like for you, your first, second, third foray, those irresolute salvos into that eventually pointless campaign, but you can only snare the (un) important bits: the chocolate milk, the bad hair, the bad breath, the running, away, towards. It’s probably the same for them, you think. Perhaps with less chocolate and twice the energy, but the same amount of fun and the lies, lies, lies, white or otherwise. You try to recall you in your past, not the you of then, but the you of now, the you who is him for them. You can’t find him (you), and you wonder if maybe you just forgot about that person, that person who you would eventually become. It’s an ingrown hair, it’s fresh gum on the bottom of your Air Max 90s; a sturdy and confident annoyance, but only so until those exultant greetings and averted gazes once again wrestle your attention away. There it is, the English textbook, rolled up ever so tightly for the sole purpose of being jabbed firmly between your buttocks; the unreasonable nasal hair of Masa-kun, who insists on standing no less than two inches away from you while conversing; the girls who will scream your name and grab at you one week, then scamper away with a purpose the next; those downcast eyes, deafening, drowning out almost everything else: the shouting, the bouncing, the textbook up your ass, all of it. And now, once more, the gum. Will they forget you ten years from now, just as you had forgotten whoever-it-was? Your pride says no, your mind says yes, your brain says both, you dumbass. You wish with all your heart that you could be as important to them as they are to you. Your new car, your new shoes, your new reprieve, your efforts to wake up next to someone new on Sunday; that void that resonates when you don’t, and that same void that resonates when you do. All of it, not nothing without them, but nothing to them, nothing compared to them. From inside your car, your almost-reprieve amid a love, that golden sort, you see some waving, some not. Hello! Hello! Buy me something! Go away. Look! What’s he doing here? Let’s play! Hahaha. Is he still there? Buy me something! Weird. Funny! Hello! Buy! Please! Look! Laughter, laughter, not-laughter, laughter. It is for you. Perhaps not meant solely for you, but still there, for you to take. You do so, graciously, or at least as you think taking it graciously might entail. You’ve forgotten the finer points of grace, but are almost glad to be without it; for fear that it might be too haughty, too deliberate for your little town. And then when they’re gone, at least until tomorrow, or Monday, or whenever, you’re glad, not because they’ve left, but because of what just was. This is you. The you as a result of them.