Midnight Ramblings.

 I Really, Really Hate...

Society. Martyrdom. Being caged. Being a teenager. Expectations. Reality. Living in America. Consumerism. High School. Being forced to do things I don’t want to do. Nostalgia. Arbitrary requirements. Feeling useless. The constant push for “progress.” Insomnia. Building for the sake of building. The impulse to destroy and not preserve. The fact that money is the main contributor to our well-being. Having to constantly compete. Absurd gas prices. Greed. Hypocrisy. Power-hungry politicians. Cars that don’t have cassette players. The illusion of freedom. Television. The concept of time. Riding the bus. Getting older. Growing up. Social networking. Vindictive people. Capitalism. Tax breaks for the rich. The fact that I’m not seven years old and playing spies in the front yard with Matthew and Sophie. Responsibility. Feeling incompetent. Shopping. Fox News. Intolerance. Bullying. Being stuck in one place. Losing innocence. Being told that your opinions matter, and then being looked down upon for voicing your opinions. Losing friends. Forgetting. Planning ahead. People that judge others based on their musical taste. Racism. Homophobia. The fact that people change. Yearbooks, and being asked to sign them. Human nature. Celebrity hype. Tabloids. Kindle. MLA Format. Group projects. Society’s inability to value beauty. The way we define success. Monotony.
                  
                         Practicality.

Maybe I have dreams that extend beyond the conventional, that transcend expectations and sensibility and what’s plausible. Maybe I want to graduate high school early and be an exchange student in Australia for three months. Maybe I want to go to Oxford after high school and study History and Modern Languages and complete my fourth year in Italy and move back to the US to go to law school at Stanford so I can move to San Fransisco and work at the NRDC so I can save the planet and sue the hell out of the bastards that destroy it with their recklessness, or push for changes in environmental protection laws. Maybe I just want to take a year off from everything and travel and live as far away from here as possible so I can understand who I am and and actually know what it means to be alive.

                                    But I forgot.

That’s unrealistic. All of it. Because we don’t have the money, because going to Oxford is too complicated and unrealistic and besides, living in England for three years is too far fetched, and History and Modern Languages is a pointless degree that you can’t possibly do anything with. Because there’s no time to study abroad, because the only way to be successful in this screwed up society is to finish high school, go to college, get a degree in something useful regardless of whether or not you actually enjoy it, get a job, make money, start a family, keep making money, pay your bills, and repeat the cycle.

Because in a world where money seems to determine our degree of happiness and well-being, where the overall goal in life is to make money and be successful in order to get by, in a world that is driven by greed and selfishness and power-hungry elites who are pushing for constant “progress,” there’s not enough room to do what you love. There’s no way to break the cycle of work/eat/work/sleep/work.
God forbid I want to live for myself and do what I want and love and feel passionate about. God forbid I want to know what freedom tastes like.

Maybe that’s why we always want to be children again when we start to get older. Because the only time you can feel absolutely free is when you have no idea that freedom even exists, that it’s something tangible and fragile and precariously malleable. It’s easier to feel happy when you don’t understand things, when the answers to everything are given to you and you just accept them without thought, without question; when the idea that such a care-free existence can be taken away from you never even begins to cross your mind. Because when you’re that young, it’s okay to be ignorant.

I think the only time we are truly free is when we’re little kids; like everything else, it fades with age. I don’t think I’ve ever felt happiness so pure as when I was in that front yard, playing spies with Matthew or running around the neighborhood with Sophie and not caring, not worrying, just innocent and small and simple and untainted by the world, by age, by problems, by anything. Just living.

I hate that society takes that away from us.

Reality T.V. Ruined the Internet (AKA Calm Down Kids - Life is a Wonderful Thing).

Sitting here in the dark, legs crossed, Cat Stevens playing in the background on repeat, I'm grinning. My mom's asleep, and the house is quiet, and somewhere in the living room the Christmas tree is glittering, peaceful and stoic. Right about now, I'm wishing I had lights to string across the walls of my bedroom; it's too dark to see much of anything, but here I am. Just sitting and grinning and fumbling with the keyboard, and thinking...

Why is it that so few of the teenagers I know are able to find any meaning in the world around them?

Why do people spend so much of their time wallowing in their petty little dramas? Mulling over things that don't matter?

Why is it that every time I log-in to Twitter, or Tumblr, or BlogSpot, I'm forced to read through a list of "woe is me" posts about how life is just so difficult, and how they're just not over him/her and it's breaking their heart, and oh god, what's the point of even being alive?
"I can't take it anymore.
It hurts too much.
I can't go on without him/her in my life.
I'm broken.
Shattered.
Crying."

A part of me just wants to take a walk down Main Street and plaster a bunch of signs around town that say:
Attention Teenagers Currently Residing on Planet Earth,
If you have a personal problem, broken heart, issue with somebody, low self-esteem, or any other form of angst you may be dealing with, please refrain from broadcasting it on the internet!

Because I don't need to be reading that; I don't want to see any of that. And the fact of the matter is, neither does the rest of the world, no matter how many friends or followers or subscribers you may have.

The fact of the matter is, the internet, which is something anyone at any time can gain access to, should not be the place for people to spill their deepest secrets and troubles onto, but for some reason, it's just become burned into everyone's brain that it's perfectly acceptable. That the world really does care that you broke up with your boyfriend, and yes, it really is necessary to explain in-depth how painful of an ordeal it was and how you're choosing to cope with it by sitting alone all night drinking and waking up trashed and depressed the next morning.

Thank you for sharing, now invest in a diary.

But my biggest question is, when did it become a "trend" to be self-loathing? If somebody were to come up with a list of all of the "teenage fads" that are present in today's society, it would be right up there with black hair dye and long bangs; tight pants and punk bands that all sound exactly the same; bisexuality and dark make-up; complaining and being sad; self-mutilation; cutting. It's all intertwined. And for a long time, I've kind of been sitting around wondering why all of this is, and how it all got started, and I've since come to a conclusion that has probably been staring me in the face since I started analyzing the situation.

Reality T.V.
Or possibly even TV in general.

Our society loves to see damaged people; it's what has shaped television into what it is today. Just a constant parade of psychologically damaged individuals being showcased and exploited in front of a big camera for everyone to watch and compare themselves to. I mean let's face it, nobody wants to watch a show about normal people living normal, everyday lives, because that's just not interesting. We want to see the brilliant, misanthropic doctor who pops Vicodin and routinely berates his patients; we want to see the ultra-skinny model break down and cry after being told she wasn't pretty enough to be on the cover of CoverGirl magazine. The abused housewife being interviewed on Oprah. The drug addict, the drama queen, the teenage mother.

And every minute of every day, people are watching this and thinking well, this must be what life is really like. This must be what I'm supposed to be feeling and thinking and acting like. They don't get that it's scripted; that the fight Snookie and whoever the hell else is on Jersey Shore got into was staged, just like what happens on The Hills, and America's Next Top Model, and any of the other mindless drivel being displayed on television today. Our sense of reality is being blurred and distorted by the fictional images on the screen in front of us.

We see people pour out their personal lives and problems on TV, so we assume we should do the same on the internet. We twist our thoughts and feelings to fit what the media portrays as "normal," and assume that we're more damaged than we really are.
We're drama queens.
Attention addicts.

And I'm just grinning like a Cheshire cat at the absurdity of it all. 

I just want everyone to step out from under this massive illusion and realize that there's more to life than the things that make us unhappy. There's more to life than complaining and hurting and crying over insignificant things that won't matter a month or a week or even ten minutes from now.

It's not even so much the fact that people are using the internet to complain that really bothers me; yes, it's obnoxious and frustrating and completely unnecessary. That's already been established. No, what I can't stand more than anything else is people who take being alive for granted.

It's the kids crying behind their computer screens typing "I just want to die."
It's the depressed, broken-hearted 15-teen-year-old telling all of his Twitter followers, "Give me a reason to live."

You're here, buddy. There's your reason.
For some unforeseen reason, all the cosmic forces of the Universe came together one day and decided to plant you on Earth and give you the ability to breathe air and harmonize and exist. That's justification enough.

We're so incredibly lucky to be here, why can't teenagers seem to grasp that? There's so much out there in the world beyond your nasty break-up, or your insecurities, or little internal struggles; there are so many lovely things in reality that can give us hope and make us happy and give us meaning, joy, love. We have birds and music, and other people; art, laughter, Walmart, lunar eclipses. There's oceans and sunshine and Harold and Maude; holidays and celebrations, two-for-one deals at Target, wiener dogs, rain, chocolate milkshakes, and Harry Potter. Lessons to learn and things to think about.

That's why I can just sit here, alone in the middle of the night with an ipod and the lights off, and just laugh. Because I don't want to cheat myself out of life by drowning in negativity and making myself out to be anything less than what I am. I'm just a spec in the middle of this whole big, puzzling, wonderful Universe, so I might as well make the best of it.

There will always be a reason to live, but you won't find it on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook. So open your eyes wide, and really look for it.

"Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. . . LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room."

- Maude, Harold and Maude. 

To understand the misunderstood is to lose sight of the beauty that captures our deepest curiosity. Oh the wonders, the wonders.

If I could be any color in the world, I would probably be black. It's the color I identify with the most; not because I'm necessarily a "dark" person, or because I'm depressed or "goth" or "emo." God, I hate those stereotypes. I don't like funerals, and I'm not transfixed with death, although I think a small part of everyone is. No, I would be black because it's not just one color, it's a mixture of all colors, every color imaginable. It's influenced by every aspect of life, and holds on to tiny fragments of everything it touches. Black doesn't discriminate, but rather embraces each color for their individual personality and incredible uniqueness.

Isn't that what society likes to believe it is? So accepting of diversity and individuality; land of the free, right? We all know the truth. Maybe if we painted the world black, it would cover up all the lies and we could finally stop pretending.

Black doesn't change for anyone. There's no light black or dark black. Just black.
It's misunderstood; degrade it with your criticism and shower it with judgment, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. A color. An emotion. A concept. A piece of mind.
Black is a curious color. =) We don't know what lies beneath it...we can only imagine and interpret.
It represents everything we are afraid of.
On the outside, it appears solid and impenetrable. But drop some water on it, break it's outer-layer, and it's colors bleed out.
Black is fragile, and so am I.

The color black is everything I am, and everything I wish I could be.