"Vent"

Sometimes I wonder if I’m turning mad slowly. I’ve pulled my hair till it hurt. I’ve screamed silently till my throat felt as dry as parchment. I’ve made angry splotches on immaculately white paper with blue blood. And nothing ever happens. Not even the tiniest bit of relief.

All because I’m young and I’m no longer allowed to use certain defense mechanisms.

Take angst-y youthful poetry, for instance. You’ve just begun to take your English classes in school seriously because you think Keats is cool, not to mention damned right about all the stuff he talks about. You have the whole world’s burden on your shoulders. And of course, you like someone. Your heart flutters and all when she passes by. Her mere shadow is enough to fill you with the warmth of a sun's ray.
So what do you do? You write a poem.

You didn’t see "The One" all morning. Oh how your heart pines! How it yearns! How it misses the one who is missed!
So what do you do? You write a poem.

"The One" didn’t smile at you today. Oh how your heart is shattered into a million fragments that can only be put together by some divine miracle. Oh how the world is cruel and malicious.
So what do you do? You Write a poem, of course.

"The One" smiled today. And you’re almost sure it was in your direction. Even though you were sitting with six others. Oh how it feels like spring with its pink blossoms and sunny suns even though it’s freezing cold and you have three sweaters on.
AND you write a poem.

You think free verse is the coolest thing that ever existed in poetry. But you can’t help rhyming now and then. Excusable.
Your flair is surprising.
You think you’re going to be the next…Whoever (as opposed to Whatever).
All because you wrote a few lines about how you could kiss the moment when you met her, and how fate plays the strangest games and how the dream you had last night was an eye-opener.

Then there are all those Dear Diary entries. We are only too familiar with them.

What is being mature and young? Bidding Dear Diary Farewell? Pushing all the teen angst poems you’ve written to the farthest corner of your existence and cringing whenever you come across an example? Not calling your best friend and whining royally?

Yes.

Being mature and young is being afraid.
Afraid of being embarrassed.