It might be illegal tomorrow

"Do it today, it might be illegal tomorrow." I've heard it before-- the axiom emphasizes the idea of spontaneity based on risk. But I go one step further. For me, there's something so exciting about doing something that you know is wrong. I'm not talking about anything very illegal, but more along the lines of a relationship... or something. Psychologists have analyzed fantasies to no end, but I argue-- the idea of committing a forbidden act is, in a way, us taking ourselves and making us into the risky people that we want to be. I want to dig into a reoccurring example of this...

I met John the summer before our freshman year. He was going into college, I was going into high school--two incredibly separate levels of maturity. He was a TA at a summer program I was attending. There was a little flirtation, then he gave me his screen name one day, and we began to talk a lot more. We flirted a lot, and it made our days together exciting. We acted normally, but every once in a while we would catch each other's eyes and smirk. Nothing happened, although he asked me out and I wished so badly that I could say yes. He made me feel wanted: sexy and intriguing. It was new, and I liked it. He was that older guy who seemed unattainable. At the time, I was frightened; I knew there was a significant age difference between us. But I kept the memories of us in the back of my head.

Now, his younger sister, Joanne and I are best friends. Really great friends, she is so important to me. We had a mutual really close friend, and once we started to hang out, it just clicked. Then, right as our friendship reached its height, John came home. He and I had kept in touch, we talked on and off. But then we ran into each other at a school event, and the exciting flirtatious air about us came right back. And this time, I wasn't an awkward freshman scared of a physical relationship. There was a big part of me that really wanted something to happen. I wanted to fill that desire that I had been holding for years. The night after we saw each other, we talked online for a while and things got incredibly sexual. Even more, I wanted to see him. We made plans a couple times but had to cancel each time. It turned out he had a girlfriend, which was both disappointing and confusing. I thought about things we had said to each other, and it didn't add up to him being in a successful, committed relationship. But anyway, I went away for the summer, and ran into him once more after school had started again. It was the same as in the spring. I was attracted to him, and this time he was single. But I was too good friends with Joanne. I couldn't do it. Even though she insisted she would be more than okay with it, I just couldn't, I'm not that kind of friend. But now, every once in a while, the idea of him and I comes up. He invited me to a show he was in, and to stay with him at his apartment. I couldn't go, but it was still an interesting exchange. And now, it's one of my most frequent "forbidden fantasies." He's off limits-- he's older, almost out of college, and he's my best friend's brother. But that makes it even more desirable.

well, come!

And so it begins again. I was of the neo-teenie bopper crew, typing away our preteen angst for all the world to see--"all the world" being our friends to whom we vehemently sent links to our blogs. With maturation and the pressures of a social life away from the computer, I gave up on such frivolities. Instead I took up poetry and fiction, replacing rants beribboned with poor grammar and internet slang with elegant prose. It worked for me for a while, and I am happy to report that my voice as a writer has genuinely developed.

But now I find myself at an even more vulnerable point of my life. I am a senior at high school, struggling to straddle the canyon that breaks childhood with adulthood. If the insecurities and dramatics of adolescent weren't enough, I now am simultaneously faced with the intensities of independence. Sure, I've faced such challenges sporadically throughout the last few years, but now the future is glaringly waiting for me to step towards it.

And once again I find refuge in the release of anonymous blogging. But this time I vow to be truly anonymous. And I also vow never to abandon standard conventions of writing. This won't be a place for me to screech about crushes and bad grades. I plan to eloquently write about the life of a girl. Any girl. She is sad and she is happy; she is aggressive and she is pensive; she is jealous and she is tolerant. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and she wants no more than to love and be loved. She will be moved, but she will also move herself. She will whisper her secrets, and shout her epiphanies. She has highs and lows, but she is always only just that girl. That girl you know.