I spent last Saturday vacuuming my big empty house. My family disappeared, my friends were out of town, it was just me and my poodles who look so alike it scares me and I don’t talk to them because I don’t know how.
I sauntered around, gazed in the mirrors; my house is full of mirrors, I don’t know why.
I inspected my face and wanted to pop the terrible pimples that sprouted from my pores like those dandelions that abruptly appear in the Spring over night, the kind you blow and make a wish.
Oh zits, please go away! I wished.
And then I stared hard and long, and those angry red dots turned to a blur. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.
So I thought about not thinking about this one boy or the ugly zits on my face or how I’m alone on Saturday.
Sometimes I’m terribly depressed. It’s nothing, it’s over nothing, I swear. I’m not the kind of angsty teenager who wants to kill herself, I’m very very happy infact.
Just sometimes... Just stupid people who don’t give a damn and I thought I never cared about them but sometimes one thing just piles ontop of everything else.
And then I thought, this is not the teenage dream I was promised, hopeing for ...asking for ...
But then that same night my friend wrote a song about me, and he sang it to me at a concert, like they do in those movies you probably forgot about. And I was shocked and wanted to vomit, and wished I'd worn something prettier.

And today I thought to myself, how did I not see? THAT was the teenage dream. Because I'm a wreck and constantly unsure of myself lately and I just have the worst of luck talking to boys anymore. But that's the whole freaking point!

I go to a school of, what, a thousand or more students and really every teenager ever in the city of Redmond goes to my school. And there's 500 in my class, but honestly, I only talk to about 15 of them on a regular basis. And it's not like there's any reason for this, I guess I just don't talk very much, I don't know? but when I do talk, I sure am loud and I sure do say a lot. So here I am, this little 16 year old girl who knows little about the world and dresses up in floral skirts and escapes to Seattle on the weekend, museums, concerts, ice cream, the ballet, it doesn’t really matter.

And all the time, I'm thinking, I'm invisible, I'm invisible, I'm invisible. But I'm really not, not to that boy who got up on stage and had the guts, the will, the drive, the love, to tell me how he felt. How he felt about me more or less. We're naked, we're young, I want to be him, I want to be a cloud, I want to be your kiss into mine, I want to be your skin, I want to be their eyes staring back at me thinking their thoughts about me. We're eating marijuana brownies in the park late at night, we're kissing in my bed and no one in the house knows, for the first time we're reading the book that will change our world, hearing our favorite band for the first time, meeting no one in particular, crying, naked, screaming, laughing, naked, loving, wanting, naked. Quickly losing innocence all the time, this is my youth and this is your youth. Now, we stand as a person who is finally themself.

This is the teenage dream. We are no one, we are no where, we are now. How would we ever know we were living it if something wondrous happened to us at all hours of the day? If every boy we ever wished would talk to us, just came right up as the very thought passed through our minds? If we had friends to go around for days? If we never made a mistake? If the whole school knew and loved us? How would we ever doubt ourselves, want to fall apart, want to stay in bed for the rest of the year until summer peaked it's sunshine into our bedroom window if everything we ever wanted was put right before our feet as if god was on everyone’s side every second of everyday. How would that moment, where he looked at me and sang the song, be the same as it was right then, where I froze, and the blood left my head, and I thought I might vomit and afterwards my voice cracked when he talked to me. It wouldn't have been the dream if good things happened to me all the time, it wouldn't be a dream at all. Movies like The Brekfast Club and Sixteen Candles had it right this whole time. I'm glad I'm a no one like Molly Ringwald was, I'm glad I'm awkward and that I worry, and I'm glad I spend days alone to myself to sit on swing sets for hours while i have these thoughts and epiphanies. The dream, is not getting it, getting it, then losing it. This is all the teenage dream. The embarrassing, awkward, sweet, scary, heart breaking, boring, perfect moments that you'll never forget because you were young and it mattered. So I wanted to tell you this, I wanted to get up on a stage and throw my words at your face like he did for me because sometimes, I'm jealous of the way he talks to the world and ignores what the world says back. If I ever told my friends the truth; that I wish I were more like him even though I'll never love him back they’d think I was insane. It’s a ridiculous story but I can’t get enough of it because he and I are so close to the teenage dream it stings.