“It all started with a rumor. A friend of mine told me about how, on the night of the Homecoming Dance, his ex-girlfriend took off to Las Vegas and got engaged. She dropped out of school and moved in with her fiancé. All of her so-called friends rolled their eyes and laughed. What a loser! they said, in the same way that they talk about each other behind their backs.
But I thought it was cool. Except I wouldn’t ruin it by getting engaged. (Who needs that kind of commitment?) I would just get in my car and go.
It would be like that Aerosmith video with Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler where they get out of their private school, ripping off their uniforms as they drive away. They go to this gas station and flirt with the cashier so he lets them take whatever they want. Then they go to this really sleazy strip bar and Alicia dresses like a guy and Liv swings around the pole on the stage. Then they are driving through some farm state and they pick up this guy and they all go skinny-dipping. And it’s almost like the rest of the world just ceased to exist outside of their own freedom.
I know it’ll never happen
Sigh…Even though I wish I could do that, I know it’ll never happen. Instead I wake up a half an hour late and rush to school, which is just a trauma in itself with annoying people getting in my face and busy work piled up to my ears. And “I have to take these classes if I even want a chance to fulfill my dreams,” that is if I even have dreams. And I have to be valedictorian or Captain of the “We Love America” club if I want to go to a “good” college. And the better I do, the more everyone expects of me. I’m being sucked into this track, you know, the college-career-marriage-kids-suburbia track.
Just the idea of becoming another version of everyone else sends shivers down my spine.
Then I go to a meeting with my college counselor, who loads me down with brochures. Part of me is interested, but the other part is cringing. I hate how they just hand me things and tell me what to do, when they don’t even know what I’m thinking or what I want.
I don’t know if I’m going to have kids
When I told my parents I want a job where I can travel around the world, they said, “What about when you want to settle down and have a family?” I didn’t answer. But what if I don’t want to settle down? What if I don’t want to have kids?
No matter how hard I try to create my own destiny, it feels like my life is already planned out. My parents tell me that they want me to do “whatever makes me happy.” Yeah, right! What if I want to join the Peace Corps or become a waitress in Europe? What if I don’t know what I want to do? Everyone just assumes that I do. Maybe everyone at school wants to end up married in suburbia, with careers that will get them noticed. But I don’t.
I don’t like most of the people at my school. They all get on my nerves. There are the aspiring goths in dog collars who are in awe of their friend who just got “the coolest” horns. There are the guys that think they can get any girl they want. There are the valley girls who can’t make one coherent sentence without the word “like.” It all just makes me wonder why guys can get away with having big noses, while all the girls in my grade get a nose-job after tenth grade. All of these kids pretend they like their friends and then talk about them behind their backs. They all think they are “the bomb” and look down on everyone else.
Whenever I talk about the future with anyone, I end up having an all-out debate. “But you can do anything you want to do!” they say. Ummm, no. I mean, some people can achieve goals, but this is a pretty screwed-up world. Very few people become movie stars or baseball players or the President of the United States (if they still want to be that). And even if they do get to be what they want, how many of them are happy with their lives?
I know I can’t do anything I want to
Maybe I just watch too much television, but the phrase “you can do whatever you want to do” doesn’t go very far. TV sitcoms portray this image that life isn’t so bad, and that everything happens for a reason. Problems get resolved and the main character’s family is always happy, as if none of the Brady Bunch kids were on drugs in real life. Teen heart throbs always get the girl, but you know that in real life they are single on Valentine’s Day.
I’m just a little disenchanted with “civilized” society. There are all of these things being pumped into my brain every day. But what confuses me the most is that some people have the most mundane jobs, but they’re completely satisfied. I feel like I’ve been brainwashed to be dissatisfied with everything. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
Sometimes I just wish I could drive away from everything. I tried it once with my friend. We had nowhere to go. We went to meet another friend at a Starbucks under a freeway and then we went to hang out in Hollywood and we just drove around—like we were free. Free at last. Except she had to be home by 11.
I’ve been told a lot of things by a lot of different people who can’t see my point of view, like that I get so wrapped up in things that I think the only way out of it is a complete break from society, or that I don’t go out enough, or have enough fun. My favorite: If I really wanted to leave I would, but I’m too scared to.
But it’s not fear that keeps me here. I stay because I love my parents and my friends and my dog and my pet fish. You can’t just leave people or pets that you care about, or I can’t. So I guess for me there really is no way out.
No matter how much I hate school and have this itchy desire to stab someone just to break the monotony, I know that I will stay here and go to school and be around people I can’t stand. Because even if I did get away, how long could it last?
So what’s so fair about that? What’s so fair about the crazy girl I mentioned running away to find some stability, while people like me have tons of stability and don’t want it. Oh yeah, I forgot. As every adult has always told me, life’s not fair.”