Being seventeen is standing on a craggy precipice, where sultry winds blow from all sides but a stubborn sun still hums somewhere far off. I have one foot on the ground and one in the air; my movements are guided by uncertainty and apprehension. Being seventeen is the conflict between the compulsion to jump and the sense to stay grounded, it is the confusion of a partially unfolded mind.

In reality, there is no seventeen. There is simply a purgatory, a semicolon, a Waiting Place, between Then and Soon. I am not asked about who I am. I am asked about who I will be or who I once was. I am a shapeless vapor, I am shifting sands, a blurred picture that captures the space between moments. Up until now I have been building a person and now my creation is called unfinished business.

Seventeen is getting drunk and then falling asleep with a stuffed animal, it’s driving a car and not knowing traffic laws, it’s falling in love forever and then changing your mind. It’s taking off your drugstore makeup and putting on responsibility, it’s covering up your cleavage and stepping into your womanhood, it’s wearing an ugly coat to school because it’s freaking cold outside instead of shivering around in a short skirt and pretending you don’t feel. It’s feeling. It is peaks and pits, it is feeling full before you’re swallowed whole. It is understanding that no undertow is too strong to handle, but sometimes you have to let yourself get swept out to sea.

Seventeen is coming to terms; it is acceptance. I know I must no longer believe in fairytales but learn from them instead. The verdant forests of life have lost their vivid childhood lacquer, but the muted tones help me focus on the path. My life is vectored now, I have not only speed but also direction. Seventeen is realizing what lilies lay behind me and what hemlocked groves stretch before me, it is watching my steps, it is fear and excitement and worry.

But in uncertainty lies adventure. You are free to do as you like in the Waiting Place, so long as you don’t leave. Seventeen is the pulsating energy of a fledgling night, it is loud music and fast dancing and long hair and uninhibited being. Seventeen is apathy and selfishness, it is communal and relishing in its narcissism. Seventeen is packing a life’s worth of living into the vast expanses between the ticks of a clock. We are the reckless creatives.

At seventeen, you are given a car and told “drive this”. You are given a problem and told “fix this”, given a magazine and told “be this”, given your whole life and told “do this”. Everyone has an opinion of who you need to be, everyone except you. We are told to act like an adult but still have to ask to go to the bathroom, made to pay Social Security when we can’t see past the tiptoes of our twenties.

We are tired construction workers coming home from a seventeen-year shift. All we want is to stop building, to look at the rickety bricks and mortar and be satisfied with the architecture of amateurs. We just want to take the night off, to go to a party, to watch a movie, to tell our mother we love her. But there are hardwood floors to be polished, there are French windows to look out of, and a roof to be built. So we stay up too late counting the minutes until sunrise, and it all begins again. Only this time for real.