I am not a real teenager. This is the title of everything. This rant, this book, my life. Well, it’s not a book yet. In fact it’s nothing more than a pipe dream spawned by inhaling too much plaster dust and Elmer’s glue in art class. But it’s mine and I will nurse it until it fades away and dies like everything else I try to get out of the confines of my head. If I had a nickel for every muse I’ve killed in the span of fourteen days until sixteen years I would be a rich girl.

But, now I am going to get back on topic. I always have a topic that I start with, a thesis statement if you will, and I always manage to leave it chasing behind me. Gasping for breath and run ragged. I can relate everything in my life to everything else which can make my thoughts seem a little non-sequiter and spaztic, but I swear they make sense to me. But I’m sure a lot of people said that. Hitler, for instance. Not that I’m comparing myself to Hitler.

I am not a real teenager. That is my point. But what do I mean? I guess I could mean a lot of things. It could mean that I’m really a 50 year old man from Norway named something Norwegian posing as a 16-year-old girl from San Francisco. But that’s not what it means. What it means is what it says. I am not a real teenager. I do not follow the standard teen mold. In fact, I am so far off it that I tend to believe it affects the way I interact with people my age.

I do not care what music is on MTV. I do not care what Hollywood is wearing this week. And I most certainly don’t care what he said she said that you heard from your brother because he knew that one guy at that party last week. But in the same breath it can be said that I am not a non-conformist or an anti-teen. I do not go out of my way to let people know that I don’t care what they think,  I don’t like to dress like my non-conformist friends, And I don’t rebel against my government because rock music told me to.

My name is Antigone and I sometimes like to think that I don’t have a place in existence. I live in my own reality inside my head that does not agree with the natural laws of time, age, and gender. Which is not to say that I don’t have a gender, it’s clearly established that I do. What I mean to say is that real teenagers don’t make good friends with people 11 years their senior. Real teenagers do not prefer the company of the legally insane over their own neurotic, image-obsessed classmates. A real teenager does not meet the love of their natural life through the internet by means of a bitchy transsexual with a passion for writing stories about goth bands. [This epic tale, for the record, I promise to explain later on.]

My name is Antigone Slavko and I will be 16 in fourteen days. I am not a teenager and I am going to write a book about things that no one cares about. It will be a book about memories and observations and emotions. But right now I am writing my own history. I will exist in this day forever because you’re reading me here. On this very page I exist. But look! I’ve digressed. I’m really terrible at this, aren’t I? Rhetorical question, not that I could answer you if you were to wrongly respond.

We were talking about me not being a teenager. I sort of hate my age group, to be honest. A vast expense of idiots, swallowed whole and blinded by their own insignificant lives. But, at the same time, I don’t think I can be any older than I am presently. Because the idea of sitting around with holier-than-thou college students who drink their soy lattes and talk about their yoga classes makes me want to vomit all over my laptop. Which is why all the twenty-somethings and college kids I hang out with don’t care about yoga or lattes (or at least not both at once). They care about social activism and rock concerts, obscure bandmembers, costume balls, and proper posture.

Maybe if I met more people like that my own age I wouldn’t hate everyone so much. Just a thought.

I can’t make you like me, and I’m not really going to try. I’ve been told that I have a knack for channeling my inner monologue, and some people say that I’m witty, and really if you’ve made it this far then you might as well keep reading. What have you got to lose? A couple hours of your life that you’ll never see again? Who cares. Just sit back and enjoy the inner workings of someone questionably sane. You’ll feel enlightened, I guarantee it.