Britney

I turn 17 today. I am losing 16 and coming too close for comfort to 18, which is two big things at once—too many at once, in terms of age. I am happy, but for different reasons than before, and I’m not completely sure how that makes me feel. A bit off. Everything isn’t right. But if I falter in moving forward square one will become my home base.

I can do it. I can move forward. My dad tells me this in an email and it makes me burst into tears. Hours earlier a woman mistakenly called me an orphan, and I wish that I could show her all the difference that the slip of a word makes. I don’t know what I would do without my father, even though I don’t get to see him. It is strange to say these words when I grew up saying that I didn’t know what I’d do without my mother, when she was Mom and Dad and Mary and God and everything in one and I didn’t even know I had a father.

I fear falling again, I fear the news reports, I fear politics and letting myself be eaten away at by another person and I fear the end of things that have just begun and I fear what I lack. It is easier to collect phobias than to stop holding my breath. I can do it. I can move forward. ♦