Coming of Age
Autor: Georgia Soares | Publicado: 2012-03-25T18:15:00-07:00


I bought my new pen at the Staples around the corner. I spent weeks thinking I need new pens, until I finally crossed
 the street from my apartment yesterday and went looking for a fine, 
black pen that did not bleed ink through the paper. Although my thoughts
 were turbulent and urgent that night - they screamed Write us down, translate us in words - I could not bring myself to do it. Less important, yet more urgent, tasks awaited me.

This
 morning I made sure to grab my pen before leaving for school. When 
classes were over, my friend John obsessively talked about his argument 
with his friends. We were childhood friends, come on! Now, each one is going their own way. How could she turn her back on us like this? he kept repeating. I politely listened, packing my books into my bag, and I impatiently blurted out Stop trying to fix other people’s problems!
 before I left. I had heard the same words for so many days in a row. I 
wondered when he would realize that people change and life moves on.

My feelings stirred up and my thoughts were banging Why do things have to be complicated now?
 Because they weren’t, a long time ago. Nostalgia hit me. Instead of 
going home to do homework and clean my room, I did what I wasn’t 
supposed to: roam inside Barnes and Noble, picking new books even though
 I already have piles
 of them waiting for me in my bedroom. There, in the store, I went 
again, read fragments of fictional stories, love advice and travel 
guides to Europe. Because routine - that annoying small pebble inside 
your shoe - was a persistent force which I could not go against, I ended up on the Starbucks line convincing myself to buy coffee so I could sit and enjoy the soon-to-be-mine
 books, although I knew all seats were taken.

Caffeine ran through my blood while I read about meditation, the science of happiness, positive thinking and the interesting discoveries of quantum physics.
 Thought provoking books were the attention suckers I needed. That way I
 forgot the drama of life, the intriguing and confusing feelings of no 
longer knowing where I’m headed. When such feelings were born, I 
cannot remember. The cashier seemed the only obvious place to end up, 
paying for thousands of words that would hopefully keep me distracted. I
 headed home, zig-zagging through twenty blocks, carrying a bag too 
heavy for my shoulder to handle. There are too many heavy stories inside it, I thought. Yet the weight did not bother me because books were meant to keep me company.

The apartment was dark and silent when I arrived home. I sat down on the sofa, grabbed my new pen, placed a new book under a sheet of paper, and started to write. Memories of my childhood came back: five years felt like ages ago. I’d
 also bought a pen five years ago: I was headed to my best friend’s 
house and decided to stop at a store to buy gum, and as I entered it, 
there was a pink pen with intricate patterns of butterflies on the 
cashier counter. That pen had to be mine.

As soon as I arrived at my best friend’s house, she began to babble, I have a real big problem. For real. I asked What is it? and she went on babbling about Igor, the boy she was falling for. But he hasn’t made any moves yet, and I’m afraid to kiss him first because I’ve never done this before. For real, she told me. The conversation dragged on for so long that I discreetly looked at my pen, it looked back at me, and I decided to write while Jen revealed her worries. But you’re so young, Jen, I responded casually. You’ll have plenty of time to learn how to kiss, and I blew my bubble gum.

The ability to write words to transport me away from worries seemed nonexistent now. My
 pen was no longer pink or decorated with butterfly patterns, but fine 
and black. Thoughts were no longer as easily translatable. Words filled 
the blank paper with black ink in an attempt to illustrate the episode of five years ago, but it sounded lifeless. Caffeine was still running in my blood, the loud honks of vehicles outside reaching my ears every second. Am I going to lose John as he has lost
 his friends? Things seem to collapse so much faster nowadays. The clock
 must have ticked away at a different pace five years - or ages - ago.

I stopped writing to look for gum in my bag. If only I had gum, I searched, only finding book after book. I chewed all the gum, I remembered hopelessly.