Sixteen

Sometimes life throws us curve-balls that we just can't avoid no matter which door we pick: "A" or "B."

I used to make my mom both laugh & pull out her hair when she would tell me the old wisdom about when one door closes another door opens... I would ask her what happens if we didn't like what was behind the new door. Could we just close it and wait for the next door to come along, sort of like trains at a station? I mean, we closed the door, right? Another should open...

I usually got an eye roll, a hug, and a mumble about children who should grow up to be lawyers because of their ability to split hairs...

But there are doors that no matter how much you don't want to go through them you have to anyway and the doors that change on you as you step through them. How do you keep them from taking you down with them (because they try with all their might. They're built that way, you know.) 

You close that door and remember that another will come along. Nothing is permanent - you take the bad with the good and the good with the bad - and understand that change will always come, and come again.

I can't count how many of those doors I've tumbled through so far, but the most recalcitrant one - darn thing just didn't want to close on me - was when I was about sixteen and trying to take care of a friend of mine who was both type 1 diabetic and addicted to cocaine without my mom finding out. My friend had run away from home... 

You know how kids don't want to worry parents, try to keep up their grades, and try to save the world all at the same time? That last part didn't go so well. At all. Which resulted in failure at the first part. The only part that came out unscathed were the grades - thank goodness that it was High-School.

Talking about running from safety... Thinking back I should have asked my mom for help instead of trying to handle everything myself, but I didn't. It is, however, part of what influenced future decisions as well as possibly what may have set me on the main track that the rest of my life seemed to follow.

Sixteen (Paul Durham)

"If just once before you died, behind these seeing dog eyes I felt something, somehow...but it doesn't really matter now. 

I woke up late again - can't make them understand that I'm different than before...

but it doesn't really matter anymore - to the great earth, the great sun, the great big reasons why you did what you've done.

Jude says she gets cold with you not there... I got no idea of where you've been, or who I'm supposed to call...

but it doesn't really matter at all - to the great earth, the great sun, the great big reasons why you did what you've done.

And the snow burns me.

And the cold covers me.

And I know, I know you don't want me...

or the great earth, the great sun, the great big reasons why it's the only thing that's keeping you young.

The great earth, the great big sun...

No, you'll never walk as far as you can run..."