On Turning 16 (Growth within the Dark)

Sixteen isn’t what they said, it’s a hoax, a fable, a made up story to make you hopeful for the decaying wasteland which is the future. Sixteens quieter, heavier. I waited for it. The change, a clean slate, becoming someone new. But nothing budged, not really. The same shadows followed me into my utopia, haunting, waiting, ready.  Sixteen isn’t freedom, it’s the same thoughts, same mind, same body, yet taller. The same pain and ache just a new tally to my score sheet. People smile and say “you’re growing up!” But growing up for me is shrinking compared to the hopeful youth of “growing.” I never grew, not in the way they said I would, instead I flourished. Sixteen isn’t about learning how to live with the weight, it’s about overpowering it, overcoming it, defeating it. Growing doesn’t need sunlight, growing isn’t the glimpse of light the sky gives you; it’s a twilight, never ending beautiful and radiant. And maybe that’s what growing up truly is. Sixteen is realizing the light you were waiting for never was coming from the sky, but it was always supposed to come from within you, and that’s growing up.