The Inner Teenager

Alaska, 2007

I thought, a while back, that I was ready to give up the inner teenager.

I thought: she's done her part.  It's time to be an adult, to face the world as the grown ass woman I am.

I thought my inner teenager had gone away.

But she knows just when I need her ... to be tough and angry when I am really broken and hurt.  She comes out with a vengeance, taking no prisoners.

I am safe behind her.  No one will ever know we are crying in the corner, laid low by all the hurtful things that people do and say; shattered by the blows from the universe.

She is right to think that this is unfair - even though we all know that *fair* has nothing to do with it.

It is too much.

Sometimes the only way to get out of bed each morning is to come out swinging.  Strike first, ask questions later, much later.

If only she knew how to make sleep come.