Janis Ian’s Song

The Janis Ian song “At Seventeen”,
Resonated with many who understood the pain,
The teenage angst of not fitting in,
Of being excluded time and time again.
The torment thrust upon us,
And later had to overcome,
Influenced how we looked at life,
With either a negative or a positive outcome.
Each of us who survived,
The struggling years as teens,
Fashioned our future days by an outpouring
Of mixed emotions, unforeseen.
At seventeen, life didn’t end but actually begun,
For most of those turbulent or joyous teen years were finally done,
Marriage, career, family, and friends,
A lifetime filled with joy or spent making amends.
The past is over, no longer relived,
The hurt that’s left buried or continues to haunt, leaving us feeling numb,
The years that have flown by since then,
The adolescent insecurities that no longer come.
Our memories at seventeen, full of desperation,
The games we played but only to deceive,
No longer hold us down for much of our existence, there lies hope,
“At Seventeen” a song we understood,
Its message of redemption, we will always still believe.