my favourite year. 

Late nights running around the park with drinks we can enjoy still because it’s illegal, the thrill of not getting id’d in a sketchy corner shop. With my two best friends we called ourselves “rooftop kids with daddy issues”, bonding over our mutual complicated relationship with our fathers. Rooftop, because that was our regular place for loitering- where we’d go after school, weekends, in our quiet town with nothing to do. Looking at people and passing cars below, the sunset, smoking cigarettes and weed when we could our hands on it. We’d shout about what we’d become and how we’d move out once we’re 18 and all live together. We’d walk past travel agents and fantasise about all the vacations we were gonna take, the places we’d see, the people we’d be. When 11pm was still late, chocolate was the only legal high, we had no complications of jobs, the future, life. Worries seemed so small, no responsibilities. 

One of the girl’s moved back to the Netherlands, and another lives in Newcastle. I wonder if they think back as fondly as I do. It was a year of experimentation, recklessness, also one of my loneliest years, being meaner than I needed to be to my parents, but it was a time of growth. A period I’d never experience the same if I’d been any younger or older it was my favourite year

sweet 17