40 year Reunion

It's been 40 years since high school...
Has it been that long since I felt a fool?
Back in those days: at 17 I was not cool
No: no way: let me explain to you
At 17 I was terrified of looking odd
I was too scared to say boo in class
I was too shy to apologise for my mistakes
I was going through so much inner angst
Hated my gold tooth: the way my ears stuck out
Hated so many things: that was me: no doubt!

Today I talked to my old teachers
Today I chatted away: like it was great
But you know: inside: I did feel a little odd
Like I was travelling back in some machine
To those days where my memory has been 
Trapped in a limbo of my own making
To those teenage years so very long ago
To those awful times where time stood still
Where I was that silly little girl: what a fool!
Today: 40 years later on: does it matter?
Are any of those thoughts still valid?
No: not one silly thing from those days
Is relevant to me in this day: so much later on!

How tragic: how sad: that we must sometimes live
A life: less than what ever it was we expected...
A life that was dished out to us along the way
Without: truly: ever really having a say...
About how we thought our life should go
About what it was that we dreamed of long ago
Don't we all just dream of happiness: of wealth, fame
But is our reality...ever only anything but a game?
How we played: how we lived: how we survived...
Is this all that we have as our claim to fame?
Is it only ever about the choices that we made...
The paths we chose to take along the way...
Can we look back: upon anyone else: lay the blame?

It is all up to us: but to our shame: as teenagers
We are trapped within that teenage body: teenage soul
We feel we have no actual control: we are dragged along
Grasped within fate's clutches: do we believe in ourselves?
No way! We forget what it was like way back then
We forget how we felt when things were tough
Today as an adult: how many of us actually remember?
How it honestly felt back then: how we sighed...
How we felt: how we cried out into the skies
How we sought to understand the way of life
Those awful teenage days: so full of strife...
I admit I was lost in those darkest of days
Desperate to find my way: to find a decent life...

Now as I honestly look back at that teenage me
As I look into the mind of that terrified teenage girl
Now: as I try to understand that scared crazy world
I have finally come to realize that I have been...
Blaming others...for my problems...for my pain
Yes: I was lost because I was in so much pain
What my cousin did to me as a little child
Set me upon a different path than I would have liked
That early guilt: that feeling of being less than complete
Turned me into a reclusive: shy: terrified teen
I was afraid to open up just in case I was hurt again
I was trapped inside a life I thought I must deserve
For surely it was something that I had done wrong