Realizations at seventeen

I always feel left behind. While my mind is eager to wander around the concepts that made adulthood, my body is still a vessel of an non-changing teenager. It never changed, aside from the longer limbs and the tiny bumps and holes in my face. It was still the same face I prayed would change as time passes by in a blur. The same arms I wished would just fit perfectly on the sleeves of my polo shirts. I hate to see my clothes loose because I will then be reminded on how skinny I still was despite eating a lot. And with the realization, I will hate a lot of things, and itcludes the ever-changing people around me and the few archipelagos in my very own body that I loathed in front of my mirror; my loose skin, too big forehead, gaugy eyes that looked like it never slept, and deadly thoughts, literally and figuratively.

I had a thought that I'd die at seventeen. I always think about it surely whenever my body lay limp on the kitchen counter like a vegetable left to rotten. When my hair is still soaked and smelling of soap from the shower where I nearly tripped and fell because my vision starts to do a tango with the shrieking quitness from my earlobes. I always think about dying whenever my tears are mixed on my chicken soup to taste (because a non-poetic soup is bland) and my lungs are full because I already ate air as an appetizer. I already gasped for air at morning until my stomach displayed a bare wasteland that felt like churning and threatening to explode with my insides thrown and splathed all over my white-tiled floor where my soiled soles are making soil imprints. I just always feel like dying whenever my teeth is aching for it houses my childhood laughters and my childhood cavities and my childhood almost-forgotten secrets on its gaping holes. At seventeen, every muscle, every organ, every fiber of my body is aching. I have back pains like I have the weight of the universe on the curve of my spine, I puke profanities along with my breakfast at morning very often, and I bruise my knees more than thrice at afternoon because my disintegrating bones just start to weaken when I tend to forget to drink my spoiled milk in a carton box.

I can perfectly describe the state of my fermenting body at seventeen very well, and I surely am afraid to age a year older because by then, I'd have a few more reasons to feel like dying a little more. Im afraid I'd discover punctuated holes on my lungs when I gasp. That I'd traced a broken bone in my left arm and legs whenever I use them to brace my nighly falls from my bed. Im afraid im a few year weaker, a few year limper, a few year dying. And so at seventeen, I already had my death note pinned at the door of my unplugged refrigerator. My palms already felt every corner of my kitchen from my tiled kitchen countertop to the dark corners at the back of the stove where I burned my pasta and my suicide notes. At seventeen, my kitchen already suffered as much as I did for it also heats up when I burn in fury and it also crumbles like ruins as if it also ages a year older. But as I was still just dying, i will let myself lay limp, I'd let my soaked hair leave smudges and wet circles on my kitchen counter, I'd gasp for air and puke my too salty chicken soup on my smelly sink, and I'd let my teeth ache until my gums and mouth and soul numbs.

Being at the verge of seventeen could really suck. It is where realizations hit the hardest. Where the weight of the expectations of the people around you and your expectations for yourself weighs heavier than the will to live. I have always been a silent child, and opening up to people, even to people dear to me, is harder said than done. I cannot say my thoughts aloud. I cannot convey what is swarming in my mind very well on my tongue. I am a stuttering mess and is always afraid of judgements, so living with the thoughts deemed silly by a lot of sharp tongues at the age where we are expected to be ready for adulthood is not easy.

Writing, however, is easy. It is where my contained thoughts break free from its restraints. Where my consciousness sleeps when the outside world wears my strength. Where words becomes me.

Writing can save me.