When We Were Bright and Beautiful

by Jillian Medoff

A girl has more confidence at sixteen than she’ll ever have in her life. She also has more self-loathing. It’s why we’re so moody, why our reactions are outsized. Cyclonic drama is how we achieve balance. The world is chaotic and irrational. At sixteen, we lack a way to control it. So we lean into the chaos. We become the chaos. We express what we feel in real time because we believe, mistakenly, that unburdening ourselves will stop the tumult, or at least help us make sense of it.

Unfortunately, it’s the memories I want to forget that have the most staying power.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I want to believe we are more than the worst things we’ve ever done. If we are, I may have a shot at a real life.