Going Nowhere: A Collection

-I Don't Regret Anything I've Done as a Teenager-

10/24/2013

In about ten days I'll be twenty years old, I'll become a young adult. And although for some reason I pretend it does, the thought doesn't scare me at all. I mean, I'm halfway through a major that I love, I get nothing but good grades, and I know that I'll get a job very easily when I graduate. That's what being an adult is about, isn't it? Starting to work, moving out, getting real responsibilities, and I guess I'm ready, or at least I'll be when it all happens.

Another reason why turning twenty doesn't scare me is that I've done everything -or almost everything- one can possibly do as a teenager. I don't regret a single thing. I don't regret having a crush on so many people when I didn't even know what having a crush felt like, when I knew my best friend liked the same boy and even if I didn't approach him, I was betraying her.

I don't regret going to so many lame parties and even throwing one for my best friend that ended up being a complete fail. I don't regret that one point in which I stopped partying because I thought it was useless. I don't regret going to a Jonas Brothers concert when I was fourteen and the going to a The Academy Is... concert when I was fifteen and had decided alternative rock, and not pop, was my thing and I gave away everything I'd bought the year before with the JoBros' face on it.

I don't regret deciding I'd wear black clothes and tight pants, hating on everyone who didn't because they were mainstream, listening to bands with creative yet silly names and songs which had a title longer than the chorus which I couldn't even learn so I had to hum a verse for people, my people to know what I was talking about.

I don't regret going out of that existential crisis and starting to wear jeans and bright colors again. I don't regret partying again and making the decision not to drink until I turned eighteen, and getting drunk, and enjoying it. I don't regret going to Cancun and being either drunk or tipsy half the time. I don't regret what happened and what didn't happen there. I don't regret not having a boyfriend because my best friends haven't had one either and they seem totally fine, because there are more important things to life, even if I can't name them right now.

I don't regret giving my phone number to that one teacher I had a crush on for almost two years. For that matter, I don't even regret having a crush on him although I knew nothing would ever happen between us. I don't regret getting any of my piercings, not even the one I had to take off. I don't regret any of my tattoos, nor confronting that one person who said getting one's own name in another language was stupid. I don't regret being stupid.

I've laughed and I've criedand gotten drunk and fought and apologized. I've learned to swallow my wordsand then to speak them up. And there's not one thing I wish I had done butdidn't, and I've built up lots of memories I'll keep forever and always withme, inside of me.