Remember Me

My potential scares me.

I have never realized, never been made aware of how powerful I am.

In my own two hands is the ability to do anything.

The ability to touch lives, to heal, to destroy. The ability to make and to break.

If I choose to do so, I can make the world a better place. I can also make it a little worse off. It's my choice.

I feel like a prophet of God after being handed the fate of humanity.

Exaggeration? Maybe, maybe. But this is more important than my sixteen year old self has ever felt. So maybe the fate of the world isn't in my hands, but its nice to know that my choices will effect people. Weather they are good or bad, they matter.

And I think about the ignorant teenagers I go to school with, and I can't help but wonder: why hasn't anyone ever told any of them? They don't know how important they are! And then I wonder, how many of them will never find out?
For the billionth time, as I hear about how faded someone got this weekend, and how they made out with someone they didn't even like, and how they're grounded because their mother found their shot glasses under the bed, I want to reach out and shake them. Shake some sense into them.
Wake up! Get over yourself! You may not realize it but you've been telling that same story, albeit slightly different, for years now! Does it never grow old? Do you never open your eyes?

You matter, I want to tell them. You are important. You can make a difference. Good or bad, its up to you, but you can still have an impact. You can save baby seals, you can stop global warming, you can feed the homeless, you can donate to charity, you can tell your mom how much you love her, but to do nothing? Wake up, I want to yell. Do something, anything. Just don't do nothing. Don't go your entire life unnoticed. Because honestly? I've heard your story from my next-door neighbor. From the girl with the blue hair that sits beside me in American Studies. From the clerk at Walgreens.

Like the countless general fiction novels at the library about the girl whose parents get divorced and her best friend moves away and her boyfriend breaks up with her and then her dog dies.
It's all the same. Sure, the characters have different names, and they live in different cities, but its just another carbon copy.

Be different, I want to whisper. You are the future. You cannot erase what is already written, but you can always turn the page. Begin again, I say. And this time, make sure the world will remember it.