I Smell Like Teen Spirit

I'm getting to that point in my life where everything smells like teen spirit.

I thought I was supposed to be out of this teen angst that seems to be plaguing my twenty-second to twenty-third year but it seems like the more I seem to grow up, the more disillusioned I get with the things I've already been told, the people and places I've already seen, that seem to never change as I keep changing. It's nonsensical; if I'm changing, why aren't they? Why is everything staying so still when I seem to be vibrating on this whole new plane of being?

There's supposedly this point in your teens where you realize everything your parents told you, for the most part, was bullshit. Sure, they got it right every now and then, but they didn't take into account a few things (I recall my dad thinking minidisc players were the new "thing" and would never go out of style. Do you have one? I sure don't.). I don't know about you, but I knew my parents were full of it around 8 or 9 when I saw them eating "Santa's" cookies. So why is it that I seem to still be grappling with the ideas, the traditionalism, that they kept trying to teach but never seemed to fit me? Is it that they were teaching to an archetype of a child and not to me personally? Is it that they never told me that it would be hard out here for someone like me, with all this inerrant good and big heart with so many vultures and scam artists circling?

Don't get me wrong, my life isn't a crap shoot by a long-shot. I've got a nice job, great friends, and a boyfriend I'm still madly in love with a year into our relationship. I'm happy, overall, but the disillusionment sneaks in in those small places where I'm unhappy and shakes awake that angry teenager in me. Why can't I have a better job? Why can't I go to a good school? Why can't my boyfriend be here, or me there, without so much fanfare/planning/logistical shit to deal with? Why?

It's nothing anybody can answer. It's nothing anybody has to answer to. It's simply the way things are. The thing becomes turning this angst into something workable, managing this generalized anger and disenchantment into something resembling a plan of action or a goal or a workout plan or something to occupy you so you don't lie in bed all day mad at the world.

Fresh back from an anniversary trip to see Tarzan, Jane is tearing apart her inner jungle in a frenzied fashion, trying to make sense of her emotions and the changed landscape within her. What does she do now? She rebuilds it (after she's done tearing it down of course) and cuts out those things that make her ask too many whys. Rearranges it so that the landscape is no longer foreign, the goals no longer hidden by the weeds and things that don't belong.

They always like to say that Rome wasn't built in a day, and they are right, but how long do you think it took a council (or even a single person) to come up with the idea that Rome needed to be built? For me, Rome is going to take maybe a week, give or take.

Wish me luck.
XoXo