Soft Serve

Lately, I keep thinking about how different everything could have been if I had just listened to my parents and actually attended high school instead of getting high INSTEAD of school. I knew my potential but chose to ignore it to become a substance abusive, black sheep. The one thing that kept me free was my blatant disregard for authority. And now….
I just wish I could go back to ninth grade and not change everything…but change a lot.
I would take back the acid and the speed but not the listening to The Cure in the dark before I went to sleep every night. I would have never started smoking but I would have still sported my JNCO’s and cute little girly tank tops and adidas. I would have paid more attention to what my elders were actually saying and stopped thinking that they were trying to brainwash me into being the conformist assholes that I thought they were.
I look back at all the angst that I had. All the anger that I felt. People didn’t understand our music, our feelings, our style and they judged us solely on all of those things and wondered why we were so angry. Who wouldn’t be angry? I am still angry, just to a lesser degree.
I look around now, and I wonder what these kids are doing? The little girls are prancing around in half-shirts, mini-skirts, and heels at age 9 and somehow, to parents, this is better than her dying her hair purple just to say FUCK YOU to the people who want to judge her. Instead, they would rather her look like Britney and be a wholesome, all-american slut, than an expressive and very real person who has her own style and opinion. This is exactly what fuels my anger now.
I mourn for the days when, through all of our baggy clothes and spiked up, multi-colored hair, we were saying, “HEY! Look at me! I am a fucking person and I will not be ignored!” Instead of, “HEY! Look at me! I am destined to become the worst kind of person! One that bases everything on the approval of the herd!”
My message to these kids…STAND FOR SOMETHING. Even if it is just what you like, even if you just want to be noticed, even if you just want to stand for…chocolate ice cream. Fucking do it.