Growing Pains

My family moved to Manhattan Beach, CA the summer after my freshman year of  high school.  That made sophomore year pretty tough, being the new kid in school.  I wasn't bullied or ostracized or anything.  I just didn't know anyone, missed my friends, felt out of place.

I wrote a poem that year, one I'm proud of to this day, as simple as it is:
Growing Pains
When I go down to the side of the sea
With my shadow following after,
And bend to the sand 
And stretch to the sun
And make the appropriate sounds of fun
By greeting the waves with laughter,
What will the seagulls think of me
As I try to cavort by the side of the sea?

Because I was proud of it, I showed it people, and it kept surprising me how many of them thought I should change the last line.  "It should be play and cavort by the side of the sea" they would suggest, or something like that.  Which meant they didn't get it at all.  That word "try" was the heart of the entire poem.

I can still remember so many feelings, new feelings, the sense of becoming someone I didn't recognize yet.  It was exciting, and also scary.  Hormones began making themselves felt, and there was an intense and constant feeling of longing, although I didn't know what I was longing for, besides maybe to belong somewhere.  I realized, understood that I was becoming an adult and that life was going to become more complicated.  Being an adult looked hard.  So many decisions, so many consequences.  I wanted to cling to my Mom and push her away at the same time.  I felt very full of myself, but knew that I didn't know anything.  I was torn between wanting to remain a child and flinging myself full thrust into adulthood.  I wanted to stay youthful and carefree, even though my heart was breaking, even though I couldn't articulate why it was breaking.

I couldn't understand why people didn't understand that.  Didn't they remember?  Isn't it like that for everyone?