Month: November 2025

I really lived it up when I was in high school. I rocked a pink beeper on my hip and started my first business selling fake IDs — yes, you read that right. 😂

There was this college guy I met at a party, and in true ’90s fashion, one thing led to another, and suddenly I had access to his college’s computer and a homemade laminator. Before long, I was printing driver’s licenses that could get anyone into a club. Ten bucks a pop, and business was booming. It went great until clubs started scanning IDs at the door — but by then, I’d already retired from my short-lived life of teenage crime.

Late ’90s New York wasn’t gentle. It was loud and electric — a thunderstorm of culture, danger, and dreams. I’d cut class and ride the MTA for hours, Aaliyah crooning through my Discman, Biggie’s flow shaping the beat of my walk. I knew every station like scripture: the B to the D to the F, connecting boroughs and destinies. I’d ride from Brooklyn to Harlem just to feel alive, to feel seen, to feel something.

The city was a living contradiction — bodegas glowing on every corner, incense curling from apartment windows, breakdancers spinning on cardboard outside Union Square. Girls in bamboo earrings licking Mister Softees in front of graffiti-covered stoops. The streets sang their own gospel — of hustlers and prophets, preachers and poets. I watched girls in Jordan jackets laugh in the face of fear. I learned to talk fast, walk faster, and read danger by the glint in a stranger’s eye.

And me? I was just this small girl with big dreams, trying to belong to it all.

I wore my hair straight and my jeans tight, my eyeliner thick and my hopes even thicker. Riding the trains, I imagined I was the heroine of some great unwritten story — half Hollywood, half hood, all heart. I dreamed of love so big it could stop time. I dreamed of careers, fame, escape, salvation. I dreamed of standing on a stage or behind a camera and finally being seen.

Brooklyn was my chaos and my cradle — bullets in the air, drug dealers on the corners, and my own heart beating too fast for a girl so young. I drank to bury it. I raged to survive it. I broke curfews, broke rules, broke hearts. I wore my rebellion like perfume.

At sixteen, I was one of the most popular girls in school — my grades hanging on by a thread, my nights filled with neon and noise. My friends and I were known as the “party girls,” and we earned the title. We’d drug my friend’s dad with Nyquil in his tea so he’d sleep through our 2 a.m. escapes to downtown clubs. We jumped into cars with men twice our age, chasing excitement, never thinking about danger, never thinking about tomorrow.

It was reckless. It was wild.
It was youth.

Those years were chaos wrapped in glitter, and if I could go back — I would. Not to relive the mistakes, but to reclaim the magic before the darkness crept in.

I’d dance again under those same strobe lights, laugh until sunrise, and let that fearless girl run wild one more time. But this time, I’d tell her to put down the drink before it swallows her whole. I’d tell her that the party isn’t worth losing herself for.

It was a time of my life that was the most fun, the most dangerous, and a time I felt the most alive.

I would go back in a second, just for the late night shenanigans alone.

Stay Tuned.

Daily writing prompt

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

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