On Freedom
I’ve been trying to remember what it felt like to be in high school. There are mental snapshots of highs and lows, spaces and faces and scenes. Important milestones, notable failures, pushing parents to lift unjust restrictions. Those memories live in my mind as static photos, easily recalled but with little detail. What lives deeper and harder to grasp are the feelings I had during that time. Too much life has happened to me to stay in a feeling; feelings leave you, what you know stays.
I remember being disproportionately concerned about my hair. Not really enjoying the academic part of school. Wrapping the phone cord around the wall into the next room in desperate search for privacy. Being unsure of my place, my body. Myself.
I remember the burden of expectation. Of the requirement of figuring out who I am, without the life experience to inform it. I remember the singular goal of leaving the house to be with my friends in any capacity, at all times, every day. I remember misjudging the intentions of others and being confused by my own emotions. I remember being conscious that I wasn’t supposed to know anything yet but refusing to forgive myself for it. Refusing to lift the burden.
Recently, I drove what felt like one hundred 14-year-old girls to a football game. Each stop in each driveway produced another girl, anxious to get out of the house to be with her friends. As the car filled up, the volume of the music rose. There were more opinions about the playlist in every new driveway, and every request was expressed with high emotion and conviction. Every request was based on nostalgia.
A longing for a time of less burden even happens at 14.
Their voices raised to a collective scream that could kill cats, but I immediately remembered what it felt like to be them. I remember discovering music with my friends that spoke to everything we felt but didn’t have words for yet, playing it again and again as loud as our archaic stereos would allow. I remember screaming it at the top of our lungs and being completely in sync, knowing all the same things. Being the same. It was total connection, total joy, total euphoria.
Total freedom.
Sometimes now, I drive with the music at a level that will undoubtedly have me in hearing aids within months. But I don’t care. I listen to all the things that make my body remember myself at different pivotal points in my life. I sing loud enough to kill cats. And just for a moment, I feel some of life lift.