When I Was 17

There is a show on MTV called "When I was 17".  The title caught my eye so I read what it is about.  They interview celebrities about what/where/when they were when they were 17.

Seventeen. That is a difficult age.  You're not an adult, you're not a kid.  You're supposed to be preparing for being an adult, you can see it but you can't touch it, act it or do it.  I didn't enjoy seventeen.

 Seventeen is when I found out I couldn't go to college.  Seventeen is when I realized that in a year I was going to be on my own.  Seventeen is when I began to panic. 

I was already working nearly full-time.  I had my own truck and was paying my own bills.  I bought my own clothes.  I was mostly self-sufficient.  I was a grown-up in a teenager body.

While I watched my friends have relationships, go to dances, and enjoy teendom, I was already way past it. Not because I wanted to be or thought I was above it but because I didn't have a choice.

I dated a bit but not really.  I had no idea how to be in a relationship because I had no example in my life. I was being an adult so I had no idea how to relate to boys my age.

Add to this that because I was able to drive and thusly go hang out at my friends, I began to experience what family could actually be.  It was disconcerting.  I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole.  I don't know how much my friends parents knew about me at the time.  I feel like writing them now and thanking them for being surrogates. 

So the point being is that I felt being seventeen was a special kind of limbo. I see 17 as a turning point in my life.  Sitting here now, some 20 *cough* years later, I can think "Well, it turned out pretty good didn't it?"
but the 17 year old in me is muttering "But it didn't have to be so f&*king hard."