Never sixteen again.
I was thinking back to the time when I was sixteen. It was a bad year for me in many respects, and you couldn't pay me enough to go back! What got me to thinking was our sixteen year old neighbor. We've been friendly with her family since last Spring, when we discovered a mutual interest in ceramics. They've been down to our studio to throw a few times, and we've fired pieces in their kiln. Their daughter worked at our local market as a courtesy clerk, and she would always come over to bag our groceries and carry them out whenever she'd spot us. We talked to her on Wednesday after doing our shopping, and she helped me to get the kids from PlayCare.
On Thursday, we came home from another trip to the store, and saw emergency vehicles down the street, but we couldn't tell whose house they were in front of. Yesterday we found out that they were at the neighbor's house. They also had gone to the store, and returned to find that their sixteen year old daughter had killed herself.
We're so sad about this. She was a beautiful, intelligent and talented girl -- what could possibly be so awful? It's like my sweetie said, when you're that age you just take yourself so seriously. I remember sixteen, and how I felt that things were just never going to get any better. Thank goodness I was wrong! I guess it's a mark of age, this part where I know that sixteen is just one miserable year that can be survived, and that there really is so much good stuff that comes after . . . but also that I could probably never share that with a sixteen-year-old and have her really believe me.
Elise, wherever you are, I hope you are at peace.
On Thursday, we came home from another trip to the store, and saw emergency vehicles down the street, but we couldn't tell whose house they were in front of. Yesterday we found out that they were at the neighbor's house. They also had gone to the store, and returned to find that their sixteen year old daughter had killed herself.
We're so sad about this. She was a beautiful, intelligent and talented girl -- what could possibly be so awful? It's like my sweetie said, when you're that age you just take yourself so seriously. I remember sixteen, and how I felt that things were just never going to get any better. Thank goodness I was wrong! I guess it's a mark of age, this part where I know that sixteen is just one miserable year that can be survived, and that there really is so much good stuff that comes after . . . but also that I could probably never share that with a sixteen-year-old and have her really believe me.
Elise, wherever you are, I hope you are at peace.