I can recite almost all the poetry that I wrote when I was a teenager. Those poems became my mantras and those mantras made life bearable. Since then I have written almost no poetry, or none that was as memorable as those verses. When I missed my sister I recited: We waded in crying, my sister holding my hand, Mother we hate the water, But she didn’t understand, when I was insecure about becoming a woman: See the pretty lady with the pretty lady pout, walking to the door, through the door, shaking in her doubt. I remember little else from those years but my collection of words.

The other day, a friend asked me how I dealt with sadness and my answers were: walk up a big hill, watch television, exercise. Surprisingly, my answer did not involve any practice that fueled that sadness into creation. As an adult I rarely rely on creative coping techniques and instead rely on practices that remove myself mentally from the situation. I didn’t realize this about myself until just now, typing out those words. I’m reminded of what Alison wrote in her previous post about quitting, “Won’t you miss out on discovering what it is you will say? (Writers often don’t know, until it’s on the page)”. When I don’t write I do miss what I have to say. How did I forget this and also, how was I so wise eleven years ago? My initial title for this post was “teenagers that don’t scare the shit out of me,” where I would list all of the blogs I read that are written by teenagers and how they make me more optimistic for the future. As much as I hated my teenage years, I’m realizing its redeeming qualities by reading what teenagers now have to say. It seems I have a lot to re-learn from myself of eleven ago.

A few:

http://childhoodflames.blogspot.com/

http://www.lauramarling.com/

http://www.lookbook.nu (many of these kids have blogs)