(no subject)
It's late and I just finished studying for AP US tomorrow and getting all of my shit done. It hasn't been too bad lately; I find ways to squeeze in time to socialize which is a great release from the stress of school and such. But, it's ok; the workload gives me something to do.
This past weekend I had the sudden desire to just...write. Like, write, as in put my ideas onto paper with no guidelines or a topic as to what I should be talking about. And, now with the help of comments and backdrop from people who've read it, I'm thinking of submitting it into the NY Times Magazine. I know it'll never pass, but the thought of actually having taken time to write an essay like this is something I'm actually proud of.
I also came to the realization that I might have figured out what I want to do with my life, and that's become a writer. It seems like a tough course to take (and now that I think about it, all the fucking math and science classes I'm taking now are a waste if that's where I decide to venture into) but if the payoff is the feeling I get after finishing a composition, then I think it's fucking worth it. I realized that writing is what's carried me throughout all of these years; I just fear that my ideas and my views of things will eventually run out and I won't be able to write with such passion and ardor as I do now.
Anyway, that's not important now- I'm trying to put off thinking about the future for...well, the future. Here it is; it's not the final piece and I'll revise it if I see anything wrong grammatically or I feel I veered off track or something. But I would appreciate if you didn't show many people as I'm strangely paranoid somebody would copy/paste it and take credit for my writing. Yes, yes, I know I'm fucking weird.
But, yeah. Suggestions/comments/critiques are appreciated. I also haven't thought of a title for it yet. Thanks for your time.
I’ve grown up with the concession that I’m unique from everyone else, but this is far from a plea for attention or a boost for self-confidence; in Kindergarten while kids were constructing abstract buildings from wooden blocks, I could be found in a corner reading a book or playing Solitaire with a deck of cards.
At the dawn of adolescence, I fell in love for the first time, and I haven’t been the same since.
My friends have always told me that I live outside of my own head, that I’m way too mature to still be considered a confused teenager gone astray. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been sought after for advice on dealing with topics ranging from homework to lust and, of course, “love.” I put “love” in quotation marks because I feel it’s the most unknown, powerful force reigning presently, and forever, within our universe. The threat of the apocalypse is no match for such a word because nothing can penetrate the impervious wall of emotion. As long as one feels, whether it be enmity, bliss, sorrow, or passion, one has the power to accomplish extraordinary things. And I hope, with the help of feeling, that what I’m writing now could possibly be that extraordinary.
I have witnessed on many accounts, and with help from my own, that the life of a teenager is far from euphoria. I might venture to even say that life itself can, and never will be perfect. But, I would then be stating an empty assertion with nothing to back it up but 16 years of experience. I do realize that I have a lot of life to live, and with the comforting embrace of hope, I aspire to achieve many great things and not just become another face in society. It’s just that I feel the conveying of thoughts from a teenager to his fellow kin could help those in need of something real, and for once, not superficial, to lean on.
I will profess to you now that I do not have any outstanding true stories that will rivet you as you sit in your seat with a cup of coffee clenched in your hand, waiting for breakfast to be served; all I have to carry me are my words and the hope that someone somewhere will be affected positively by them.
I arrived at high school in hopes of shaking off what remained of my first clash with love and silently, but steadily, venturing into other places that could possibly store some hint of such adulation. (I leave out details of this first encounter for the sake of friendship and my own tears). For many “hopeless dramatic romantics” like myself, it didn’t take much to get lost in the eyes of a passerby or confiding into the soul of a lost cause. So, from one obsession to another, each stop slowly slicing away at what left of my battered heart, I continually failed and failed again at trying to come across someone who had the same emotional capability as me. I had little time to suppress myself from taking each leap of faith because I was blindly flailing for some sense of justification for my own affliction while trying to figure out where I fit in the lives of everyone around me.
With the help of an isolated summer from the usual drama common at school and the supporting shoulders of the few that were truly there for me, it dawned on me like the rays of the rising sun softly caressing my skin as she rose in her grandeur to greet everyone with a regal smile; in all my toil at achieving what I believed I wanted most, I failed to realize that love isn’t something that can be sought for; it is felt by those after they have realized that their lives would be drastically different if they were without the person that they are so dearly devoted to. Love isn’t something that can be bought, traded, sold, or shrugged off easily; it’s the dog that bites and grabs hold of the leg of your local mailman, refusing to let go and allowing him to move on; it’s the stab of the dagger that bores into your heart when you’re awoken at night from a phone call as an undistinguishable, sobbing voice informs you that your two close friends had died that night in a car accident; it’s the tears that roll down your cheek and fall delicately to the grass as you weep in silent grief, imitating the rain pattering consolingly around you as you deliver your final sentiments to the mother that was all you knew and brought you onto the earth to experience such a feeling.
As you read this, I know you’re probably thinking “these are heartfelt images, and I do sympathize with anyone in each of those situations, but what does any of this have to do with me?” I just feel as if I should illustrate somehow that you’re not feeling this sense of confusion and helplessness on your own; there are so many others out there that feel just as incomplete and disconsolate as you and are trying to figure themselves out and how they fit in the perplexing puzzle of life. If you’re looking for an answer to the question that fuels all of our lives, I’m sorry to say here that I cannot find the answer for you; the road of life holds much in store as long as you continue to move along it, heart held on your sleeve and all. I do, however, feel that if you continue reading this, you may reach a sense of relief or comfort that is much needed in all of our lives and figure out a way of restoring your heart to its rightful place.
For most teenagers we feel that our parents are emotionally inadequate in trying to understand the struggles that we are going through in these laboring years. How could they perceive the stress we’re amassing as we try and balance our school and social lives while they’re working a nine to five job to put food on the table where, at often times, we don’t even sit down together to eat? How could they understand the stake driven through your heart because Mike or Amanda had let you down after three months of what seemed like the real thing? The bag of weed under your bed as a side-stepping from withstanding the shouts of your parents in the other room? The crunched up beer cans littered at your feet as you glance around the room and see your friends passed out, covered in their own vomit while thinking to yourself, “is this supposed to be relief?” And God forbid you bring up wanting to see a psychiatrist because you know they would take it totally out of proportion.
So, you’re left alone. You’re left fighting a losing battle against yourself in trying to figure out how anything makes any sense at all.
What you have to realize is that, you’re never alone; confrontation is one of the biggest fears of almost all teenagers in that we feel as if it’s so unpredictable in the way the outcome will come to affect our lives and that unpredictability is too much for us to take in. But, if you live your life avoiding every situation that could involve confrontation, you’ll never know to what extent the possibilities lie.
Probably one of the major confrontations you’ll experience in your life is with regard to discussing specific topics with your parents. As weird as it sounds, your parents are probably your best bet in trying to figure out certain things in your life because they have gone through it as well; it’s not like they were put here when they were 30 and hit it off and had you and are totally oblivious to anything that has to do with functioning as a teenager. They did go through it as well; and although today’s teenage society leans more on counting calories, drugs, and sex interspersed with the usual drama and conflicts of life, they have some recollection of what it was like trying to get through high school as a teen.
If you don’t feel as if your parents could relate or you fear what could possibly stem from such a confrontation, us teenagers always have each other. Whether you have just a few friends in a close pack or numerous within your school, there are always people that would truly spend time trying to talk you through any conflicts and struggles that you’re dealing with; we’re all experiencing the same struggles and emotions.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, as a human being, it’s our duty, with the help of others, to survive. It’s our duty to live our lives, improve the general conditions of the environment we’re living in, and pass on our rituals and histories of the past to those that follow us. Humanity was borne not for the success of a select few; we were put on Earth so that interdependently, we can lift each other up and nurture and grow together, even through the harshest of times. You can never venture too far before coming across someone that truly cares and would give up time to see you become satisfied with the life you’re living. Although it seems hard to conceive such a notion, especially since present-day emphasizes making the most money in the quickest time and not wasting precious seconds becoming emotionally attached towards immaterial things, the fact is that we’re all in this together. For as long as civilization has existed, love has enforced an unwritten contract amongst all of us in which we are all bound for the long haul together.
Although many will say that you’re just wasting your time looking for love, I think it’s more about taking and living life as it is and making the most of it. I’ve wasted 16 years of my life trying to figure out all of these things in my head and propelling my mind and my heart to only one common goal, stopping only after I’ve taken each fall. Those are 16 years that I’ll never have back and will only exist in the form of memories that continually replay every moment where the outcome could’ve ended up differently: nothing but ceaseless “What if’s” and unquenchable desires stored in a corner of my heart and my mind. But, I don’t regret it. I definitely wouldn’t be the same person if every situation went my way, and I most definitely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to share the experiences of my life and the thoughts of my mind on paper with you.
So, wipe the tears off your face; it’s safe to finally open your eyes. Tomorrow is coming and you, and only you, hold the reins that can get the gears in motion that’ll help propel you to live a life where the opportunities are endless and the unwritten endeavors abound. This doesn’t mean that “love” itself should be completely thrown away from your vocabulary because only through it will we ever be completely happy and whole. Like Ben Gibbard says, “Someday You Will Be Loved.” Until then, make the most of what life presents you with while, stored in a crevice of your heart, you keep waiting in anxious anticipation for that one great love to arrive; there is no reason to give up hope on it.
I know I haven’t.
This past weekend I had the sudden desire to just...write. Like, write, as in put my ideas onto paper with no guidelines or a topic as to what I should be talking about. And, now with the help of comments and backdrop from people who've read it, I'm thinking of submitting it into the NY Times Magazine. I know it'll never pass, but the thought of actually having taken time to write an essay like this is something I'm actually proud of.
I also came to the realization that I might have figured out what I want to do with my life, and that's become a writer. It seems like a tough course to take (and now that I think about it, all the fucking math and science classes I'm taking now are a waste if that's where I decide to venture into) but if the payoff is the feeling I get after finishing a composition, then I think it's fucking worth it. I realized that writing is what's carried me throughout all of these years; I just fear that my ideas and my views of things will eventually run out and I won't be able to write with such passion and ardor as I do now.
Anyway, that's not important now- I'm trying to put off thinking about the future for...well, the future. Here it is; it's not the final piece and I'll revise it if I see anything wrong grammatically or I feel I veered off track or something. But I would appreciate if you didn't show many people as I'm strangely paranoid somebody would copy/paste it and take credit for my writing. Yes, yes, I know I'm fucking weird.
But, yeah. Suggestions/comments/critiques are appreciated. I also haven't thought of a title for it yet. Thanks for your time.
I’ve grown up with the concession that I’m unique from everyone else, but this is far from a plea for attention or a boost for self-confidence; in Kindergarten while kids were constructing abstract buildings from wooden blocks, I could be found in a corner reading a book or playing Solitaire with a deck of cards.
At the dawn of adolescence, I fell in love for the first time, and I haven’t been the same since.
My friends have always told me that I live outside of my own head, that I’m way too mature to still be considered a confused teenager gone astray. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been sought after for advice on dealing with topics ranging from homework to lust and, of course, “love.” I put “love” in quotation marks because I feel it’s the most unknown, powerful force reigning presently, and forever, within our universe. The threat of the apocalypse is no match for such a word because nothing can penetrate the impervious wall of emotion. As long as one feels, whether it be enmity, bliss, sorrow, or passion, one has the power to accomplish extraordinary things. And I hope, with the help of feeling, that what I’m writing now could possibly be that extraordinary.
I have witnessed on many accounts, and with help from my own, that the life of a teenager is far from euphoria. I might venture to even say that life itself can, and never will be perfect. But, I would then be stating an empty assertion with nothing to back it up but 16 years of experience. I do realize that I have a lot of life to live, and with the comforting embrace of hope, I aspire to achieve many great things and not just become another face in society. It’s just that I feel the conveying of thoughts from a teenager to his fellow kin could help those in need of something real, and for once, not superficial, to lean on.
I will profess to you now that I do not have any outstanding true stories that will rivet you as you sit in your seat with a cup of coffee clenched in your hand, waiting for breakfast to be served; all I have to carry me are my words and the hope that someone somewhere will be affected positively by them.
I arrived at high school in hopes of shaking off what remained of my first clash with love and silently, but steadily, venturing into other places that could possibly store some hint of such adulation. (I leave out details of this first encounter for the sake of friendship and my own tears). For many “hopeless dramatic romantics” like myself, it didn’t take much to get lost in the eyes of a passerby or confiding into the soul of a lost cause. So, from one obsession to another, each stop slowly slicing away at what left of my battered heart, I continually failed and failed again at trying to come across someone who had the same emotional capability as me. I had little time to suppress myself from taking each leap of faith because I was blindly flailing for some sense of justification for my own affliction while trying to figure out where I fit in the lives of everyone around me.
With the help of an isolated summer from the usual drama common at school and the supporting shoulders of the few that were truly there for me, it dawned on me like the rays of the rising sun softly caressing my skin as she rose in her grandeur to greet everyone with a regal smile; in all my toil at achieving what I believed I wanted most, I failed to realize that love isn’t something that can be sought for; it is felt by those after they have realized that their lives would be drastically different if they were without the person that they are so dearly devoted to. Love isn’t something that can be bought, traded, sold, or shrugged off easily; it’s the dog that bites and grabs hold of the leg of your local mailman, refusing to let go and allowing him to move on; it’s the stab of the dagger that bores into your heart when you’re awoken at night from a phone call as an undistinguishable, sobbing voice informs you that your two close friends had died that night in a car accident; it’s the tears that roll down your cheek and fall delicately to the grass as you weep in silent grief, imitating the rain pattering consolingly around you as you deliver your final sentiments to the mother that was all you knew and brought you onto the earth to experience such a feeling.
As you read this, I know you’re probably thinking “these are heartfelt images, and I do sympathize with anyone in each of those situations, but what does any of this have to do with me?” I just feel as if I should illustrate somehow that you’re not feeling this sense of confusion and helplessness on your own; there are so many others out there that feel just as incomplete and disconsolate as you and are trying to figure themselves out and how they fit in the perplexing puzzle of life. If you’re looking for an answer to the question that fuels all of our lives, I’m sorry to say here that I cannot find the answer for you; the road of life holds much in store as long as you continue to move along it, heart held on your sleeve and all. I do, however, feel that if you continue reading this, you may reach a sense of relief or comfort that is much needed in all of our lives and figure out a way of restoring your heart to its rightful place.
For most teenagers we feel that our parents are emotionally inadequate in trying to understand the struggles that we are going through in these laboring years. How could they perceive the stress we’re amassing as we try and balance our school and social lives while they’re working a nine to five job to put food on the table where, at often times, we don’t even sit down together to eat? How could they understand the stake driven through your heart because Mike or Amanda had let you down after three months of what seemed like the real thing? The bag of weed under your bed as a side-stepping from withstanding the shouts of your parents in the other room? The crunched up beer cans littered at your feet as you glance around the room and see your friends passed out, covered in their own vomit while thinking to yourself, “is this supposed to be relief?” And God forbid you bring up wanting to see a psychiatrist because you know they would take it totally out of proportion.
So, you’re left alone. You’re left fighting a losing battle against yourself in trying to figure out how anything makes any sense at all.
What you have to realize is that, you’re never alone; confrontation is one of the biggest fears of almost all teenagers in that we feel as if it’s so unpredictable in the way the outcome will come to affect our lives and that unpredictability is too much for us to take in. But, if you live your life avoiding every situation that could involve confrontation, you’ll never know to what extent the possibilities lie.
Probably one of the major confrontations you’ll experience in your life is with regard to discussing specific topics with your parents. As weird as it sounds, your parents are probably your best bet in trying to figure out certain things in your life because they have gone through it as well; it’s not like they were put here when they were 30 and hit it off and had you and are totally oblivious to anything that has to do with functioning as a teenager. They did go through it as well; and although today’s teenage society leans more on counting calories, drugs, and sex interspersed with the usual drama and conflicts of life, they have some recollection of what it was like trying to get through high school as a teen.
If you don’t feel as if your parents could relate or you fear what could possibly stem from such a confrontation, us teenagers always have each other. Whether you have just a few friends in a close pack or numerous within your school, there are always people that would truly spend time trying to talk you through any conflicts and struggles that you’re dealing with; we’re all experiencing the same struggles and emotions.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, as a human being, it’s our duty, with the help of others, to survive. It’s our duty to live our lives, improve the general conditions of the environment we’re living in, and pass on our rituals and histories of the past to those that follow us. Humanity was borne not for the success of a select few; we were put on Earth so that interdependently, we can lift each other up and nurture and grow together, even through the harshest of times. You can never venture too far before coming across someone that truly cares and would give up time to see you become satisfied with the life you’re living. Although it seems hard to conceive such a notion, especially since present-day emphasizes making the most money in the quickest time and not wasting precious seconds becoming emotionally attached towards immaterial things, the fact is that we’re all in this together. For as long as civilization has existed, love has enforced an unwritten contract amongst all of us in which we are all bound for the long haul together.
Although many will say that you’re just wasting your time looking for love, I think it’s more about taking and living life as it is and making the most of it. I’ve wasted 16 years of my life trying to figure out all of these things in my head and propelling my mind and my heart to only one common goal, stopping only after I’ve taken each fall. Those are 16 years that I’ll never have back and will only exist in the form of memories that continually replay every moment where the outcome could’ve ended up differently: nothing but ceaseless “What if’s” and unquenchable desires stored in a corner of my heart and my mind. But, I don’t regret it. I definitely wouldn’t be the same person if every situation went my way, and I most definitely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to share the experiences of my life and the thoughts of my mind on paper with you.
So, wipe the tears off your face; it’s safe to finally open your eyes. Tomorrow is coming and you, and only you, hold the reins that can get the gears in motion that’ll help propel you to live a life where the opportunities are endless and the unwritten endeavors abound. This doesn’t mean that “love” itself should be completely thrown away from your vocabulary because only through it will we ever be completely happy and whole. Like Ben Gibbard says, “Someday You Will Be Loved.” Until then, make the most of what life presents you with while, stored in a crevice of your heart, you keep waiting in anxious anticipation for that one great love to arrive; there is no reason to give up hope on it.
I know I haven’t.