All the dimly lit makeout sessions in boy’s cars muddle together into what I would collect my teenage years as. All the messy breakups and hasty makeups. Most of all I would say it’s all the same. That I could stir them together like soup and it would be just one bold flavor. I think maybe it would taste like gumbo, which I’ve only had once, but it just seems like it would be that. It feels like it’s all been just one boy, one love, one life, and it is just my one life. Just mine, but it has been mingled and intertwined with and chopped away from so many other people’s lives. I feel like a vine, pieces missing, grown over and having to start anew sometimes. Although some vines bloom, I’ve passed that and now feel strong in myself. Now that my teenage years are almost at an end, I realize that it’s a puddle of rainwater, and I love the rain.