I Am Still Here

     I grew up caring for everything. All I ever did was care about what happened and I tried to make everything right. Once I fully grasped the situation though, I realized that what I was doing was pointless. I couldn't fight like my favorite characters on TV or in my favorite books could. I wasn't fighting someone head on. There wasn't anyone in a red hat that I had to beat and once that was done, everyone would be saved and would live great lives until the next bad guy came around to fight and you had to beat him and it'd be okay again.

     No, I was fighting someone much more slippery. I was fighting people. I was fighting good people with good intentions. That made it harder to understand what was going on much less win the war. Because even though these people had good intentions, it was making things worse as they were making something better. It was giving people in other countries food and shelter and schools while it deprived their own country of the exact same things. It was giving children sports teams while at the same time it was limiting extracurricular activities. These intentions brought about good things. It made the poor able to live in a house and have food, but it also limited the potential of the middle class.

     So around the same time I entered high school, I had decided not to care. I had decided to just watch the people try to put out the fire by moving it to another place. I didn't know how to fight such an opponent. Someone who had raised me. Someone who I had looked up to growing up. Someone who was trying to save everybody. I was fighting the hero, so didn't that make me a villain? Didn't that make me a bad guy? But I was trying to do the same thing wasn't I? Wasn't I trying to save everyone too? So why weren't we on the same side?

     I didn't understand. How was I supposed to? I was just thirteen when I figured this out. I was just in 8th grade. How does an 8th grade girl from a small suburb in Ohio, a farming state, stand up and say, "This is wrong! Can't you see you're making everything worse?" and make everyone listen to her? She can't. She screams and screams until the screams are stuck in her head in one long winding note that won't ever go away, and no one hears her because she doesn't know anything. How could she? She's only thirteen. She can't know anything at that age.

     That girl grew up though. She grew up to be sixteen. The age I am now. And I still believe she was right. I've grown up since then at an alarming rate. I seem to be a completely different person every time a new season comes along. I can make certain people listen to me now. I know how to make them stop and think about what they're doing. I have good ideas and know how to back them up. I can make people stare in wonder at what I've written and the words sink in until they become embedded into their very core. I understand more. I know how to fight my opponent now. And I also know that someone else will try to fight me because they believe that what I'm doing is wrong because it makes things worse and not better and I have to let them and to fight back.

     I have faith in myself and I've got to believe because I want to live in this world. Not just survive it. I want to see the world and have fun every chance I can get. And I will. I will see the world. I will leave my mark on this planets history. I will make myself known. I will make people listen, even if they don't understand what I'm saying or find fault in it. I will become important and rise above Shakespeare himself. I will live on in everyone's hearts for the rest of time, until the planet itself is consumed. And even then I will still be there waiting for the new world and new people to come around and build everything back up again. I still care. I can't make myself not care.

     As long as I still care, I will still be here.