You’re not dead yet

I threw a stick. “I’m too young to be a father. I’m too young to be anything. I’m seventeen. I haven’t even left home yet. It seems unreal. You won’t tell anyone, right?”
“Sealed lips.” She whipped a twig from her dress. “It’ll be like having part of Karen back. I miss her. We never talk about these things. But I miss her. Do you?”
“Yeah.”
“But we don’t ever say it out loud, do we?”
“I guess not,” was all I could reply. “I don’t like the silence, either.”

I didn’t realize then that so much of being an adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.

Douglas Coupland – Girlfriend in a Coma

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