They’re all gone. The boys in the poems, the girlfriends, the places, the time. They are like tall tales of a Me that existed only in a fictional world. I read back—eleven years ago. Nine years of filling my life with men who meant nothing to me, and to whom I meant nothing. Years of friendship I have only a tattoo to remind me of. Words. Pages upon pages of words that came from some made-up place inside of me that wanted to make me believe I felt something, that I loved and was loved. The same images occur again and again—withering flowers and eyes full of pain. It’s just depressing. I’m embarrassed of myself—I wish I could personally apologize for all the stupid things I said and did to everyone.

They say that youth is wasted on the young. I feel that this implies something is always wasted on us—things we haven’t learned to appreciate or accept yet. By that logic, it would appear that at this very moment, something is being wasted on me, and I haven’t the awareness to be thankful for it. Perhaps it is the excitement of transition to adult life, which may seem a little too overshadowed by fear to really come across as a good thing just now. Perhaps it is not pursuing other hobbies and interests for the sake of focusing on tasks that will later be revealed as insignificant—like cleaning the toilets or sweeping the kitchen floor instead of learning watercolors. The one thing I can feel certain of is that by spending any amount of time lamenting my lost youth, lost love, missed opportunities, or the inability to appreciate flawless skin when I had it, I squander the present moments in a similarly lamentable way. So, I say, everything is wasted on everyone, unless they make use of it all.