I really regret the fact that, in one move or another, I managed to lose almost all of my teenage writings.

Because, seriously, I wrote some angst-ridden poetry that would be perfect for an event like this.

One of my "poems" ends with the following three lines. Thankfully, my brain has spared me from remembering the rest of it.

The destruction of joy
The absence of hope

The Death of a Dream.


I had a tendency to be a wee bit melodramatic over really, really tiny things back then. I don't remember exactly the circumstances under which I graced the world with that...dreck, but I do remember that it was my freshman year of high school (and isn't 14-15 the best time to write angst filled poetry?) and I was convinced that every dream I had ever had in my whole entire life had been shattered by...something. I wrote in on the back porch of the house in Pittsburgh, in my pink calico print journal, probably while waiting for the sun to set - just to make sure the mood was right.

If I can say nothing else about my college career, I am grateful to the professor TG called "The Taskmaster" in a comment to a previous post for convincing me when I took her creative writing class that I was not a poet. Not even a little bit. Not even for pretend.