7/20/17
It feels like my brains on overdrive 24/7… I can never get a break. I keep thinking and thinking about an incredibly diverse number of topics- some things that directly affect me, and some that deal with the grander scheme of things. Like, I can’t control it, I really should just calm down and accept how life is but I can’t. I keep reminding myself about all the problems that life has in general and that this society forces you to go through no matter how much you try and prepare for it. I feel stressed out every single day and every single night and I don’t know what to do to stop it. I think during the day a ton, but when I try to lay in my bed and sleep for once, it gets worse. The thoughts in my head keep moving like a hamster on his wheel, or an ocean while tides abuse the shoreline. Even after I drift into the phase of sleep and lose consciousness, I can’t be calm. I haven’t had a single day since summer started where I have not dreamed about something that has either woken me up at night or woken me up at the regular time, making me sweat and dread what will come in the future.

After seventeen years of life I have come to understand the expression: ignorance is bliss. I remember how I used to think how false it was- to be ignorant and dumb and to just lack knowledge of the world you live in can’t be anything but bad… but sometimes with my brain going on overdrive every day I sometimes I wish I didn’t know some of these things and that my parents didn’t teach me so much. So, I could at the very least enjoy the last year of adolescence peacefully.

One of the few gifts I was ever given by God was my ability to write. It is also something that gives me joy. I’ve been told by a multitude of people to go write down stories, and my experiences because of how well I can describe them and how vivid of a picture I can paint with just words alone. I’m not sure why I’m just starting now… maybe I was too lazy to sit myself down and just type. Maybe I was too afraid to just confront the inner demons that live inside my tangled thoughts. Who knows? But I’m deciding today to start writing once a day about thoughts and experiences. I guess you can call it a journal, I don’t know. Something to keep me occupied, I suppose.

I should have been doing this for years now. I’ve always had thoughts that I could never share with anyone. I never knew my extended family too much. My dad’s family lives out of state, spread all across the east coast, whereas my moms just seem to have some crazy TV show drama all the time, consequently putting a space between me and the rest of them. That leaves me with my immediate family… just my two parents and my brother. Up until a couple of days ago, my dad’s been working three different jobs. A mailman, pizza delivery guy, and at our church. Mom has to work also, as a receptionist at some major engineering company. It makes me feel guilty, honestly. Two people and four jobs between them. I sit here not making any money, using all their stuff, and eating all their food… and then they want to pay for my college as if they’re not already in a tough enough financial state as is. Especially my father…. He’s almost sixty but he works harder than almost anyone I know. My mom asks why I’m so stressed out and one of the reasons is this. Besides the pressure I get from them, how could I live with myself if I don’t succeed? My parents work so hard and all of it is for my older brother and I. My dad could have been retired but he works more and more just to provide a college education, but what if I don’t make it to college? What if I dropout? What if I graduate and I never land a steady job? There’s so many possibilities and so many people don’t succeed simply because of bad luck. What if that ends up being me and all this pain and stress I put them through is for nothing? How am I not supposed to stress about that?

Besides that, I’m afraid and anxious of getting old. I’m already seventeen and I feel as if I’ve done nothing with my life so far. No stories to tell my future kids, nothing to look bad on that I would be proud of… nothing. But at the same time, adults say these are the best years of my life. How do you expect me to look forward to a future that supposed to be worse than the present when the present already looks bleak? I’m only surrounded by three adults, and two of them are in a marriage that make them both seem miserable half the time. Growing old and working every day. I have an older brother who, I love dearly, but at the same time doesn’t have much of a social life. No girlfriend, not many friends, sits in his room most of the day. I don’t want any of those lives when I grow up. I just want to be happy, but it seems like that’s almost impossible.

Now I’m here stressing about the future, but I’m still just a teenager with teenage desires and thoughts. I still have drama from my current social life. I still have girls I crush on who never like me back. People in school who dislike for a reason I’ll probably never know. Parents that will beat the black off of me if I come home with grades not up to their standards. Chores, a summer internship/ a job, and realizing how ridiculous popularity is and how meaningless it is to try and impress people, but still wanting people to like you at the same time.

I’m a month and a half into my summer vacation, and I have felt even more depressed than I did during the school year. For crying out loud, I feel like I have nothing to look forward to every day. I remember just two weeks ago I told my mom that on the way home, and she tried to make it seem like I was crazy, but couldn’t think of anything to say. I mean, when you add in all of these above things, even on the short term my future looks bleak. It’s hard enough to find people who actually care enough to want to go and hangout with me during their free time, and I can barely coordinate with that because I’m stuck in this crappy, below minimum wage paying, joke of a job. We aren’t going anywhere for summer like the beach, I have no way of transportation outside of my parents, I’m still broke, and by the time I go home I’m too tired to really want to do anything.

After seventeen years of having a friend group that consistently shrinks (for one reason or another,) I probably have no more than five real friends. Y’know, the ones who you can tell basically everything to. The ones where you’re so close it’s almost like you’re siblings. Honestly, me saying five is generous. I only have one I’ve ever talked about deep stuff with, and I haven’t been able to hang out with him once this summer. I guess there’s one more, but It’s hard to count her ‘cus I’ve fallen harder than a man falling off a cliff- and that’s a whole new can of worms I honestly don’t feel like talking about at the moment.

All of these things about other people that have me stressed, but at the end of the day, the biggest problem I have is with myself. I’ve never liked myself, honestly. Not on some suicide stuff, but I just don’t like me. Yeah, weird, I know. I feel like I’m ugly, I’m useless, I can’t do anything right and I’m beyond lazy for whatever reason. My self-esteem is lower than the sea floor and I feel like I’m being judged every time I breathe. Forget second guessing- I third, fourth, maybe fifth guess my every move. I always think I’m going to fail, I always end up doubting things like if people really even like me. Are my friends really my friends? Is that crush I have one sided or do I have a chance? Do I look good, can I sing at all, is my writing good, etc, etc.

See, this is why I never talked about this stuff? It seems like I’m a kid who loves to complain and never sees the good in his life. I honestly don’t believe that’s true at all for me, though. I recognize my two parents and brother love me and would do anything for me, but at the same time it makes me guilty. Like, why for me? What did I do to deserve any of this? Useless, worthless, me. Useless, worthless, me… I tried to talk to my mom once about this- I mean who would understand you more than the woman who had you in her stomach for ¾ of a year before birth? But before I could get thirty seconds in, she said “Oh stop it, all teens are like that now. Always trying to make everything seem worse than what it is” and never let me finish. My dad says I can talk to him about anything even if we end up disagreeing… but, I don’t know why I can never bring myself to do so. It’s so hard for me to talk about what’s on my mind that it would take days (or in this case, pages) to go and explain it all.

You know… one day I want to just be rich and repay my parents for everything. I wish I could just be Tony Stark or Donald Trump rich so I could pull a few million out of nowhere and just say “here ya go! No need to worry about anything else now!” and maybe buy them new cars, a better house… They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money sure can buy unhappiness.

At the end of the day it feels like no one really understand me, and I guess I can put that on me. I never really could communicate what I go through or stress about to anyone. I feel like I’m over exaggerating and people would shoot me down every time, but these feelings in my chest rage like a forest fire in the middle of August and I don’t know if I can keep it to myself anymore. I feel like talking about some of my views, like the ones on politics or religion would get me slandered by most. Like how in church a few weeks ago, some cancer survivor was talking about how she went through a living hell with almost seven (I think, I can’t remember) different cancers, but God got her through in the end and they were gone. It was pretty touching at first until she said something else. She said that just the day before, the doctors said they saw all the cancer back again… and then she still said that God did all of this just to “prove how strong he is.” I’m sorry, but that… doesn’t sound good to me. Someone who puts you through one of the worst things ever just to prove he can cure it? And now you have it again? But of course, everyone in the church was crying and clapping and going off about how wonderful it is. The way she described it, it seemed like God was just using her to show off how cool and powerful he is.

To conclude, (hopefully, as long as I don’t rant again) I have to go against what I said about my crush from earlier. I have to write about her a little bit. In a nutshell, we walked home every day together and I saw her in school every single morning and lunch. But, not being able to see her now makes me go crazy. I remember my dad saw me walk home with her one day that he took off from work, and he asked if that was my girlfriend (which is funny, because he and my mom do not want me to date) and I denied it (because it is true) and basically whenever she comes in conversation I try to make it sound like I never did and never would have feelings for her. But it was all a lie. I was probably trying to just convince myself I didn’t because I didn’t know if it would work out and ruin our friendship. Now she’s on my mind every day and she seems to talk to me less and less and I wonder if she really even likes me like that. Honestly, I wonder if she even really likes me at a friend nowadays. I just want to see her. Extremely bad, too. And no, not for some horny teenage reason, but just to be around her. Making her laugh and smile and making her happy brings me great joy. I try not to, but I get jealous when she’s talking about other guys she’s friends with, but I try to play it off like it doesn’t make a difference. I’m really such a child at times. All my life I’ve been the guy who was best friends with girls, but never seen as “boyfriend material.” I’m always in, what some may call, the friendzone. Always giving advice to my crush about her boyfriend which, sadly, was never me, I’ve gotten to the point where I fully expect the result to be the same with every girl I talk to. I always wonder why this is… they go for the guys who don’t care about them, but care for their own selfish desires (aka sex) and the ones who go around and cheat and basically act like crappy partners. I don’t want to say girls are shallow, but, at least the ones I’m thinking of right now, don’t seem to care about any of that as long as they’re good looking. On the other hand, I’m here listening to their problems, helping them out with homework, always being by their side, getting the “I wish there were more guys like you” phrase three times a week, but they scoff whenever someone suggests we’re dating.

If I do say so myself, I don’t think I’m that bad. I don’t drink, don’t do drugs, have above a 4.00 GPA, have a job, don’t get in any type of trouble, have dreams for the future, and I’m funny. Well, I think I am anyway. All I gather from this is either girls are missing out or I’m being delusional about myself. Who knows? Because I sure don’t.

I suppose that’s all for the day. I’ll come back tomorrow (probably) and talk about some more stuff. Wow I really just wrote four pages about nothing. I’m such a loser.