When I first listened to Driver’s License, I felt it immediately. I closed my eyes and I was sixteen again, not going to places where I would be greeted with the numbing pain of heartache over a boy I thought I’d like forever, and who I thought would like me back forever.
My home town felt even smaller back then than it feels now when I visit. Yet every time I go back, I feel sixteen again. I wonder if I will always feel sixteen there, like that ugly little town is some sort of alternative dimension where I’m stuck at sixteen, dramatising gossip and falling for boys.
When that feeling comes, of nostalgic angst, it’s like seeing everything for the first time again. The world was giving then, and every season was hunting season for a giddy girl like me. The world only grew demanding later on but then, at sixteen, I didn’t know it. I was just going to eat it all up and throw tantrums because I could.
The constant newness never seemed to fade and perhaps I was imagining life more than living it, and it fed me with so much greatness. I like that when I’m in a trance then, everything sort of blends together but I really just sit back and filter out the times I cannot change, the times I cringe thinking about, the times I cherished only after experiencing them. Young adolescence. That’s a thing. That’s a time. Now I feel old with my 24 years and I want to turn back time to do everything all over again. Learn lessons again. Make mistakes again. Get to know people again. I wish I could hold onto my youth forever, but I’m glad I’m this kind of person that I am now. As cliché as that sounds. But then again, I loved everything cliché about youth when I was living it.