Average

     At fifteen years old, I have the physical and mental maturity of a fifteen year old. Coming from attending high school, I see that everyone tries to stray away from average. No one wants to look exactly their age, they want to look younger and more innocent, or older and wiser. No one wants to have average intelligence, they want to have "above grade level" so that they have something to validate their boastful nature, or below so that there's something highly attainable to strive for.
     Everyone tries to be unique in their own special way, which in turn groups together bands of similarly unique self proclaimed individuals. The girls who are very athletic but care a lot about their appearance stick together in the cafeteria. The boys who try to start fashion trends with corduroy shorts and bow ties tote North Face backpacks around the halls. The friends who listen to popular alternative music and giggle about cats anxiously await the bell that dismisses them from band class.
     You see, every time one person stands out, they are apt to fall back in again with people following their trends and ideas. This has been going on seemingly since the beginning of teenage history. It's why we're not still wearing bell bottom jeans and perms. It's why Nike sneakers and Katy Perry are popular. Someone decided that they were bored with what they had and they needed change.
     If you ever stop and think where what you're doing came from, if you thought it was your idea, it probably wasn't. I don't wear floral print dresses because I feel like it, I wear them because they are very available and looked good on someone else before me. I don't use the word "ace" instead of "cool" because I invented the word, I use it because a character in a book used it and I thought it was cool.
     Competition also feeds into this system. If I feel that someone is trying to out-unique me, I will find another component of myself to draw out to make me not just a copy. I will thicken my eyeliner as a type of war paint and let out a battle cry of folk music.
       Everyone does this, and if you don't, you're probably just another liar.

Massachusetts Air

     My friend Joe moved here from California at the beginning of the school year. I don't often think of him as "my friend from California," because he has evolved into my "friend who still gets very excited when it snows even though it's March and every one else is very done with winter." The first real storm we had was after a bad weekend of freezing rain. Everything had a layer of ice over it, and then dandelion puffs began to drift down. Joe was ecstatic. Though he is seventeen, he was overjoyed with the thought of frolicking in the snow, despite our warnings that snow over ice is terrible and very slippery.
     Fast forward five months, to today. Since the rest of this week has been fairly warm, I thought it safe to wear a daisy printed dress with a thin green sweater. Knowing that the temperature rises through the day, I felt this to be appropriate. I was sorely mistaken. I ended up walking home with Joe, in snow. This is the boy who is in a winter coat and boots walking with a girl in a cotton dress and converse.
     Once we parted ways to get to our own abodes, I started thinking of the deplorable winters here. It started getting unbearably cold in mid November. We have endured almost half of a year in winter. By the time I got home, I could barely unlock the door because I couldn't feel my fingers, my nose had moved far beyond a cute pink and was now blue, and I was miserable, this is also entirely my fault for not wearing a coat.
     If you were to interview anyone living in the north east right now, my bet is on the fact that they will all be cranky and eager for the equinox, which will likely bring about no such change in the frigid Massachusetts air.

Feel Like Dancin'

    There are days where all you want to do is stuff your feet into your old tap shoes and kick around in a bright yellow dress to very loud swing music. At first you'll turn on the radio as background noise while you start your history homework. And you start tapping your pen along to the beat. Then you start to roll your left shoulder every so often. Then you find yourself shuffle stepping to the sink to fill your glass with water. Next it's off and running as you embrace your inner Daisy Buchanan and choreograph a full on flapper dance in your too small kitchen.
     It's things like this that make me remember that letting go is not always a bad thing. Yes, I finished my history homework, but a smile never left my face.
     My impromptu dance probably wasn't very good, and I had no idea what to do with my arms, so they flopped around my hips, but no one but my very confused dog was there to see. And if there were another person in my way, I'd let them watch along and laugh at me.
     Today is a beautiful day, beating out the snow yesterday, seize it.

Speedy Beat

     Being a self proclaimed musician, I hold myself to the fact that I can keep tempo like nobodies business. This is in fact a lie. Watching me tap along to a song is a sight for sore eyes, my eyebrows furrowing deeper with each beat that I fall behond, tounge pressed tight between my lips in a sad attempt to save myself.
      I know the basic root of counting music, and I try my darndest to match my footsteps to the drum beats pulsing behind a singer. One foot forward, next step, continue, following the bass drum, steady. I often find myself chasing the beat, which I guess is a musical term, but to be honest, I can never keep straight what is and what isn't, but this time it's literal. The mix of music on my phone that keeps me company on the way home is greatly varied, and for than I loathe myself. The song choice can go from an uptempo walking song that I can easily and merrily make my way, a song like Some Nights by Fun., to a slow song that drags my extremities in a mourners stroll, such as Alseep by The Smiths, to a high jump 'n jive song, bringing me to a full on sprint.
     Maybe the first sentence of this post gave it away, but I am not an athlete in any sense of the word. Needless to say, when Panic Song by Green Day starts pounding, I groan and accept the fact that my feet will not dance atop pavement or dirt roads on a journey, and it bores holes through my ears.
     A sort of serendipitous resolution came to me yesterday. My friend and I were planning on going swimming at the YMCA, yet the pool was closed due to untold circumstances involving someone swimming for 24 hours straight. The outcome? The verdict that we would head upstairs to the gym area. I have never set foot in one of these traps of sweaty elders and jacked college football players. Here we are, two teenage girls in Mickey mouse sweatpants, ready to work out. I was intimidated. The only time a smile broke across my face was when I was too light to. make one of the machines move.
     But I digress, I've decided that I needed to link my physical fitness to my ability to walk in time.

The Elephants Footsteps (and other analogies about a teenage girls emotions)

There is three things I hate most in life. Math, soggy mushrooms, and confrontation. Math is workable, I don't have to torture myself with writing out algorithms and quantum physics in my free time. Soggy mushrooms are completely avoidable, don't put them on pizza or sautee them and you're golden. Confrontation is inevitable.
     I will start by saying this: the public's opinion of me will probably be 100% inaccurate by the time I turn ninteen, because of the amount of agreement I make. I let people trod all over me and beat my opinions down like an ant under an elephants foot. The elephant doesn't realize it's impact, but the ant is crushed. If I state an opinion in a debate and someone counters it, I will agree with them specifically to get out of people being mad at me. I do this because if anyone else gets mad at me, I get more mad at me and more stuck in my own head. If you tell me that I am being annoying, chances are I will say "yes sorry" and then silence myself for an hour and only make any sort of noise or motion when instructed.
     My feelings are very fragile and get torn easily, but I will never let anyone know, because that would detract their attention away from what is important and onto me. I found one person who I talk to on will about my emotions and ink soaked rice paper heart, though my tears get sculpted into a puddle for her to compare her ocean to. She makes her problems out to be more than needed, bigger than mine, making the fact that my little brother called me fat and that I'm rubbing my bulging stomach with tears in my eyes less valid.
     I will not talk to anyone else, because they will try to make me feel good.