I’m sitting at home listening to a CD entitled “Pure Relaxation,” while I write my thoughts in a word document. My hands smell like flowers and the cars that pull into the cul-de-sac keep shining lights into my living room. Lately, I always feel hungover. I’m not quite sure why, but I’m lazy and I have one of those headaches right where my head connects to my neck. All I want to do is eat gross foods and play Super Mario Galaxy 2. Even that is starting to feel like a duty though, like everything lately. I get in this mood, but I’m fairly optimistic, so I try to shove the thoughts away. I believe I’ve dipped into the depths of depression when I was younger, and I’m nowhere near that upset. I don’t even feel upset, I feel lost. I feel like I spent an entire year at college trying to “find myself” and near the end I finally did. I was starting to feel stable and independent and really love who I was becoming. I was so excited to come home, but when I came home I found that things weren’t exactly the way I left them. All of my friends had spent the year finding themselves too. And while many of us shared that experience, it doesn’t mean we aren’t all a little different because of it. Ever since I’ve been home I’ve felt as if I’m rediscovering myself. I don’t even know what that means. Nothing is making me happy in the same ways that it used to I guess. I’m reorganizing my priorities, re-understanding what makes me feel good and what just doesn’t anymore. Sometimes that’s the hardest part. After being at a place full of constant excitement for a year, a place where you’re always surrounded by people…being at home starts to feel a little lonely. I want more than anything to just have my group of friends over like we used to, have them stay over until 4am, stay up talking about stupid things, playing stupid board games. I want us all to spoon on the trampoline and giggle about dumb shit, I honestly never thought I would be “too old” for that. I still don’t believe I am. In fact, I don’t think my friends are either. It’s just between work and getting drunk or high we can’t find a night where we all can just stay up that late and play. I desperately need that play. I know it sounds ridiculous that the priorities are work and getting drunk or high, but that’s what we do. Because now that everyone has been drunk or high, everything that seemed fun before just seems like more fun if we do it under an influence. I hate that. Because I don’t believe it. There are too many wonderful moments that we don’t share with each other anymore because of that. But no matter what the circumstance I feel like someone always has to bring up a fucking substance. I would plan a substance-free event but how lame does that sound? It sounds like some stupid program the CA’s force some teens to do as their punishment for getting written up in the dorm room for underage drinking. I don’t want to punish my friends, because I’m guilty too, I just want to remind them of those old times…I’m just not quite sure how.
I told my friends I would write for them. My dream has always been to write a book as a young author and be on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I’ve written since I was young, but don’t have the attention span to ever finish anything. So I told my friends I would write for them, I would write about them, I would tell our story. We feel special, but I feel most groups do. But I told them I would write our story with emotion, I told them I would write a chapter about each of them. I was going to title Mary’s chapter “180 day return policy.” Mary constantly spends hundreds of dollars at the mall, buying every item she is hesitant about. She then proceeds to return most of the clothes, after showing them all to us and getting our opinions. When she was recently really unsure about an item of clothing, she responded with “oh well, at least I have 180 days to decide” after looking at the receipt. I laughed and couldn’t help but imagine it as a title of a chapter in a book. I can’t even explain why but it just describes Mary. Frantic decisions with weird deadlines. Weighing every option for a specific time period then taking a leap. But after thinking about it for a while, the title kind of applied to me, and everyone I know, and that weird depression we all seem to be feeling right now. I feel as though we’re all kind of forced to make all these frantic decisions right now and are always feeling the pressure of these weird deadlines. There’s always something to be done, and when there’s nothing to be done, it’s stressful because you can’t stop figuring out what you’re forgetting that needs to be done. I guess that’s growing up, and it’s scary. Our thoughts are becoming more complex and we’re having less time to just sit and think about them, discuss them, sort them out. I feel like everything is figured out for me but everything is also a chaotic mess. I have this plan I’m forced to follow but it’s not really what I want to be doing. It’s like I have a time period to weigh options, but at the end of some random deadline I’m expected to make a life-altering decision and stick with the plan. I’ve always been a planner, but planning has never made me truly happy. My best moments in life have been spontaneous. I think most people can agree with that statement. I’m 18 now, have never finished a book, and can probably say I never will. I guess it sucks that I can’t accomplish these goals, but it’s also a blessing to know that I can start a piece of writing and move on when I get bored. That’s the beautiful thing about hobbies. There is no 180 day return policy. That project can sit in your room until the day you die and whether you work on that project every day or never revisit it again, that is entirely up to you. There is no deadline, there are no life changing choices. Things in life are spontaneous, ever-changing, but they add to the beauty. There is no possible way that I will ever be on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She’s canceling next season. But I could have worked my ass off for the past 3 years and spit out a novel, just to get one done. I could have worked on it nights when I didn’t want to, just so I could say I finished a book. But for what? To find out that Oprah has cancelled her show and my dream was dead? I’m glad I’ll never be on Oprah. I don’t even like her and I would hate to think I wrote a book just so I could be on her stupid show where she gives away cars to already wealthy people and promotes her ridiculous magazine. I write now for pleasure, with no deadlines. It’s one of the few things in life that I can just take my time with, and no one is expecting anything from me.
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