Missed opportunities define my life.
I don’t want to miss this one
I don’t want to miss out on this
Who would have thought that in the wake of my biggest defeat
I would find my greatest achievement
And my greatest potential challenge
I never want to give up
I want to get this
I outran my potential years ago
A beautiful soul? Beauty is defined
You’d never scream so loud
Through a true connection
Maybe I should stay for this
Are you gonna be something?
“I fell in love again, all things go, all things go”
-Chicago, Sufjan Stevens
It seems to me now that the teen years are generally portrayed as a spiraling abyss of depression, hopelessness, and bad choices. It’s ironic to think that we’ve always been told that our teen years would be the “best years of our lives.” If you look at the general public consensus of teen-hood as well as the typical mindset of teenagers, it’s not difficult to see that these ‘precious’ years contain some of the worst trials and ordeals that we’ll ever have to endure. Why is that? Why do we make our teen years such a bleak time in our lives? Sure, some people claim that they loved their time in high school and would give anything to be 18 again. For most people, that’s bullshit. They may have loved high school, loved their friends, free spirititedness, youth, but when they really go back and think about it, their teen years probably sucked. The main themes of being a teenager are hopeless love, backstabbing and untrustworthy friends, and insecurity. Look at movies such as Mean Girls. It’s meant to be funny, but what the movie really shows is a view into the lives of typical teenagers. All teenage years are plagued with relative ‘tragedy;’ ordeals that destroy the soul and mind. There is no reason for this to be the case. We have created this concept of what being a teen really is. Why should we make ourselves miserable over teenage love, why should we treat our friends with contempt and distrust, why should we hate our very own beings because they don’t conform to a standard that we have created?
When we become teenagers, we expect our lives to become dramatic tragedies. We are looking for that boy-stealing best friend, those people that criticize our appearance, and the ultimate unattainable love. It’s what drives the teenage soul. Where would we be without our extreme drama and depression? From my point of view, every single teenager I’ve met has had something that keeps them down, some real or imagined problem that prevents them from being truly happy. Even people who seem like they have the perfect life and perfect relationships really have some deep, dark secret which is what drives them to depression just like everyone else. Nobody I’ve met is actually happy. They might have relative happiness for a time, but eventually their problems bring them down just like everyone else. This mindset has to change. Youth is something you can only have once, and we throw it all away in a mire of depression over things that won’t matter five years from now anyway.
