High School: The Flames of Life and Love

   It's a funny thing finishing your senior year in high school, in some respects you know almost nothing, in other ways you know way more than a lot of people. There's the actual work you do (which sometimes feels like it never ends) be it school, keeping up with your family or your actual job. It's true, believe it or not, high schooled kids know a lot now. We see love, we see "love" we know lust, drugs, sex, money, lies, power, people who act like pimps, people who question themselves and moments that make us feel like we could hold the entire world and own it. The few years in high school we have we're quickly pulled from a world we were comfortable in and tossed to an ocean where none of the fish really know how to swim. Sure, some of the fish can swim for awhile or act like they can, but every one of them has had a time when they felt like they were drowning. It's a strange place, the life of a high schooled adolescent is, we find so many emotions so fast and with each emotion we're given we have a multitude of ways to handle it. When you find loneliness you can A: Find others to get rid of it. B: Drown it in a bottle or some other substance. C: Complain. D: Ignore it, tell yourself its a phase and you don't need anyone that badly anyway. The same rings true for all emotions found through out high school, be it love, lust, anger, happiness or whatever.    So, with that, where do we go? If we don't reach for love or happiness our hands will always find themselves being filled with something. We all have to reach over life's fire to grab love and hold tight. Sure, sometimes we get burned by the fire beneath us. Sometimes we even get a hold on love, real love, then we do something stupid and drop it into the fire, losing it forever. I remember a time not too long ago (I'm still a senior in high school as I write this so remember that) when I thought I had love, real love, and in fact, I did. I had found it, I would've done anything for the girl it went out to. The end of the story doesn't in happiness, unfortunately, not yet anyway. There weren't feelings being returned and in time (far too long of time but I  can be stubborn and learn slowly) I began to realize I had found what love felt like to give, but she wasn't ready for it. You have to accept people where they are in high school just as much as you have to accept yourself where you are, look at the situation and say (sometimes out loud) "who am I?" and "is this who I want to be?"  only you decide your placement in life, not your parents, not what that one idiot said about your face in 7th grade, you and only you. Thanks for reading! --Mattaghetti