Running in Circles

The year was 1996. I worked part-time at a small Italian restaurant, and was only two years away from getting my high school diploma. It was a strange time in my life, with moving out and then back into my parent’s home, finding love and then running from it, and making a variety of bad decisions in the meantime.

Being a teenager is the most difficult time in life, in my opinion. We go to school, have jobs, fight with our hormones, and deal with issues of life, some serious and others not. All the while, we’re trying to figure out who we are and where we’re going. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid. It was for me at least.

Although I would have never admitted it, not even to myself, I had no idea what I was doing. Every time I thought that I was on the right track, the outcome would quickly prove me wrong. For example, moving out of my parent’s home. At the time, I thought it was needful, and a wise choice. It wasn’t.

I quickly lost sight of my priorities; started failing classes at school, and bad choices were made one after the other. Before long I didn’t know right from left, and my future was starting to look rather bleak. So in an effort to straighten out my life, I moved back home.

It’s funny how a person runs away from something in order to find what they need, and all the while what they needed was what they ran away from.

I did that a lot while growing up. My whole life was full of circles. Thinking back, I could have avoided a lot of hard times and heartbreak had I just stayed in one place. But, I was too busy running to see that.

Running in circles. That’s what teenagers do. We run and run, trying desperately to find happiness, love and acceptance. We search for our place in this world, our purpose. Some take the easy route and walk around all the hurdles that come their way. But others, like me, head directly toward them. We trip, fall, and get up, only to do it all over again later.

No matter which route we take, many lessons are learned during our teenage years. Valuable lessons that we can pass onto others, to hopefully keep them from making the same choices.

Out of all the times in my life that I would love to relive, my teenage years is not one of them. Although I’m very grateful for the lessons learned, I sure am thankful that those years are over.

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This post is in response to the Daily Post Prompt: Buffalo Nickel 

Dig through your couch cushions, your purse, or the floor of your car and look at the year printed on the first coin you find. What were you doing that year?