are we all perpetually 17?

The liminal space between the precociousness of youth and the edge of adulthood.

a) a bookmark bought in Amsterdam, b) a photobooth film in Brussels as a 17-year-old, c) an archived story I was writing

The liminal space between the precociousness of youth and the edge of adulthood—is it 17? I’m no longer 17, but I feel like her every day. I feel her misplaced angst and generalized anxiety toward the world. Her tastes have morphed neatly into mine through the playlist I curate, the authors I read, the museums I wander through, and the plotless films I still watch. 

What is it with the universal obsession with being 17? Shuffle any playlist, and you’ll likely find anthems that reference being seventeen. If it’s by The 1975, it’s probably a variation of dating a seventeen-year-old or about how “she can’t be what you need when she’s 17.” Artists write, sing, act, and paint about this brink into the unknown. We all sing along to “you are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only 17” every chance we get, meaning every word of it.

There’s a certain air of freedom that slowly dilutes as the years weigh on us. Naivete urges us to live out scenes in movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and scream “in this moment we are infinite” riding through a highway tunnel of your mid-sized city.

The yearning and the awkwardness; a chest full of hope fueled by inexperience and the insatiable appetite to eat your favorite parts of the world and make yourself whole.

At the ripe age of 17, I began my freshman year of college. It was 2014, and Tumblr was the online asylum that housed a very specific zeitgeist. Pale grunge aesthetic, American Apparel disco pants, thigh gaps, and eating disorders reigned supreme with Sky Ferreira’s Everything is Embarrassing playing in the background. I’d spend hours scrolling blogs hyper-curated by my fellow teenagers, using basic HTML to add a looping Arctic Monkeys song that played every time you opened the blog.

I used to reblog grainy black-and-white photographs of quotes from authors, philosophers, and other artists wearing black turtlenecks and pretentious gold-rimmed glasses, seated in slightly different versions of chaotic studies with books stacked on top of each other. I spent so much time in these online worlds that when I scored tickets to a Cage the Elephant concert, it felt like stepping straight into my blog. Hearing Cigarette Daydreams and singing along to the “you were only seventeen” verse felt like an epiphany I no longer have access to. I snuck into the meet and greet and told Matt Shutz that I “loved his music” and he said he liked my face. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the week. 

I had all these idealized versions of what it would be like to finally be seventeen. To be the object of adoration of the human race–it was my time! And I had no idea what to do with it.

Montages dictated by film scenarios, choruses harmonizing “I used to be free, I used to be seventeen”. Novels where the protagonists were “just as troubled morally and spiritually” as I was, like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in The Rye. Sylvia Plath existentially stunted me with her fig tree metaphor, where every branch represented a different version of herself destined to rot as soon as she chose one to live. It wasn’t until I finished reading that passage that she clarified her existential teenage angst was merely the consequence of an empty stomach.

I was ready for it all and I stayed ready. Impatiently waiting for it all to happen to me, not just around me. In the words of Lorde in her anthem Ribs, “it feels so scary getting old”. The tide was in my favor, but being 17 felt like being trapped in a rising action. Like the few seconds before a steep fall on a roller coaster. The trembling knees before a first kiss. The ache in your cheeks after laughing too hard with your friends and thinking “absolutely nothing will ever top this moment” just because you had your first IPA beer, and someone said “Why does this taste like a moist flower?” It was all bottled into the 5'2’” frame of a teenage girl.

I had so much life encapsulated in me that it burst into the most mundane moments and made them memorable. The pendulum swung from “I know everything about the world!” to being crippled by impostor syndrome because someone in your class writes a better research paper than you, so you end up calling your mom crying, “I just don’t know anything at all!” 

I think we all knew more about the world and ourselves at seventeen. There wasn’t so much mental fatigue or the burden of endless choices. The things that mattered were felt deeply and recklessly. Some truths of the world felt absolute back then. The core of those truths I still remember, but most of it is now tangled in self-policing, second-guessing, and the weight of knowing better.

I don’t know if the pendulum ever swings back, but I do know I now ride the waves with grace. The kind of grace I so fiercely denied myself at seventeen.

I still keep the screenshots of the hilariously niche threads that nurtured my sense of humor. The devastatingly uplifting quotes I reblogged, the ones that are now web-weaved in a TikTok carousel synced to a Phoebe Bridgers song. I still drink my coffee sweet and triple shot, but now I swap the brown sugar for Monk Fruit. I’m no longer bothered by the high-brow coffee connoisseurs who fight over cataloging a cappuccino as a dessert and not a cup of coffee. I take magnesium, vitamin D3, and ashwagandha every morning because I read somewhere it helps with stress. I drink spearmint tea for digestion, layer on gooey vitamin C serum and Gua sha the contours of my face.

I’m falling into the character I’ve always wanted to play—rising through the arc. I’ll continue to sigh in the midst of greatness, cry in front of oceans, and hug my friends tightly after a glass of something sparkling. I’ll remember my 17-year-old self by singing in the car to my 2014 playlist and later dancing to my 2024 one. I’ll write sentimental letters to those I like, jot notes on the margins of the books I lend, and remind myself of the gravity of my steps. And I don’t know what any of this means, but I also do—because you do too, right?