The Fourteen Odyssey
“I want you to listen to it very carefully, because you’ll hate me now but someday at some point I’m sure you’ll remember my words. And hopefully on that day they’ll make sense. At least a little more than they’ll do now.”
The truth is that I don’t know how did I get here. But for some reason, that’s the standard Sunday evening situation. It is always me standing at the door with someone lying on the floor crying.
I thought the crooked cock Vayne was the last, but I was sadly mistaken.
“Hey, I know it sucks when we’re fourteen and we listen to our parents, siblings and older friends saying that the problem is in our age, in the lack of maturity we have at the point we’re in. It doesn’t help. We can’t see through it, and we can’t see beyond. We need something we understand, something we can actually point at, hold on to and say ‘ok so this is the real problem’. So even if you hate me now, I don’t care. You have the right to. I’ll tell you something weird, but you’ll surely remember me from 16 on.”
She huddled on the floor, still hiding her face between her arms. “I won’t hate you…”, she growled. “But you here… it is already sucking.”
“I know…”, I said. “That’s quite part of my job, making your life suck”, I said. “But hey, you’re a good person. But right now you’re better on the inside than you are on your outside.”
She stared at me, kinda mad.
“The most important thing you already have, which is your heart. You got a good heart. But there are things we say and do at this age that seem completely fine in our heads but once you reach the next level, you’ll look back and see you’ve spent too much energy worrying about things that are actually pointless.
Everything seems the end of the world. All friendships matter, popularity counts, we seek expressing ourselves in many ways and we end up regretting really soon. We break our faces really easily, because we trust people a lot more than we should. We worry too much about things because all things and all situations seem eternal. And even when we think we’re sure about stuff, we’re deep down lost and a little scared, but most of the time we can give ourselves that luxury because we still have at least one older person who’s got our back.
You’re not stupid, you’re just young. You have a good heart, but you mimic a thousand of things your parents do in four walls that should never go out, because you see no harm.”
“When did you started seeing things like you do now ?”, she asked between hiccups, rubbing her long sleeves on her face, completely washed by tears.
“Oh hon, I’m 21, and I still don’t know a lot of things. I’m still learning, just like you. I just… have been here longer so I have broke my face many more times than you did”, I said. “I have seen myself looking back and thinking about my past actions and finding myself the most ridiculous human being alive a thousand more times than you did.”
She finally started looking at me, so I continued.
“Most adults are just kids that have been here longer than you have. Some grew up, some just aged, haven’t necessarily matured. They undoubtedly have more experience than you do, but it doesn’t mean they know exactly what they are doing.
But one thing is for sure, they have all been there. Being more assisted by their parents, being on their own for being orphans, studying more to reach some future goal, letting studies behind for dealing with other tough life situations — all in their ways, adapted to the life they had, to the reality they were inserted to, but they all have been fourteen, just like you.”
