Life is hard. Life is not fair. Life has many ups and downs, especially growing up.
Once you reach a certain age, responsibilities pile up and you are expected to become more self-reliant. The teenage years are rough- balancing school, friendships, and family life. Then add the prospects of mental health and relationships.
Mental health is really important and life could take a toll on one’s mental health. Anxiety due to school and other things. Depression or sadness due to life and the tolls that life brings onto someone.
photo credit: Medical News Today
Relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships are really hard to navigate during the teenage years. Finding a connection that works is hard, and is really important to keep one sane.
School is very stressful. Teachers and parents put pressure on students and kids to do well in school, so they can do well in life. Students and kids also put pressure on themselves to get into great colleges.
Life is full of ups and downs, full of scary and fun moments.
Have you ever met someone with an abundance of dreams and ambitions, with a passion to make a change and to make something out of themselves? Someone who wishes, and knows they can live outside of the box and innovate what they think to be a world in need of innovation? The next question, do you know someone who has these ambitions but is not given the means to complete their goals, or they get trapped in the everything-sucking whirlpool of society. So instead they have to sit at a desk, working a normal person job, stewing in their ideas.
I know someone like this, I live with someone like this. Although it makes for interesting conversation, these kind of people feel like they did not get to reach their full potential. And as time ticks away so does their opportunity to make something great out of themselves. This leaves them feeling angry, feeling like the world is pinned against them, and quite helpless all at the same time. But these people have responsibilities. And even though they feel all these feelings they have to repress them so that they can provide, in my case, for their family. The product is an incomplete and unsatisfied person.
I have been affected by this incompleteness because they have, unintentionally, pushed their need for greatness onto me. All the opportunities they did not take, they require I take. In hopes to save me from a “normal life”. All the ideas they have that have never taken off, they expect me to make them into a reality.
Journalism can be strange. It is a new way of facilitating my love for writing, yet with emphasis on the most important element – storytelling. Instead of researching my topics online, I now must go into the world and obtain information from people.
The reactions differ – some are more than happy to tell their story. Others, however, remain reserved as you push your way into their schedule. I enjoy the social element of journalism. I have an intriguing conversation with at least one person per week.
Journalism has taught me how to reach out to people, even if you don’t know them. I understand the format of an interview request email, and how to conduct a conversation where I get the other person to say all the right things. In journalism, I am but the message man, bringing other people’s stories into the limelight. I have enjoyed this experience as it has shifted me away from academic writing, improved my social skills, and made me a better storyteller.
I can not even count the times I have wanted to reach out to you, scrolled through my contacts to find your number, went to type out a message I never sent, or looked at old pictures and felt an urge to speak to you again. But I remained silent and kept the words unspoken. I’ve wanted to tell you how much I’ve missed you in these last six months. There is not a day that goes by where I do not think of you… But recently you’ve been living in my mind much much more.
Recently everything has reminded me of you. I see images of us from a year ago to the date, hear your name in conversation, or see things we would have shared with each other and something tells me I must speak to you again. But instead, I keep the words unspoken, although there’s this feeling deep in me that we need to speak once again and that something will bring us back.
My unspoken words consist of these thoughts for the most part; you rapidly became the most significant person in my life, and for that, I’ll forever be grateful for, but the day we stopped speaking a little part of me began to crumble. You took a part of me with you when you evaporated from my life. You were part of my daily routine, we spoke every day from the second we woke up, to when we would lie our heads on the pillow each night. We shared some of our highest highs and lowest lows together, and always made an effort to check in and see how we both were feeling. You being gone felt like I was missing my other half. You were my person.
These unspoken words have given me the chance to reflect on how I feel, and what drove us apart. I understand why you had to leave, but I do not accept it, and if I am being honest I probably never will. But I am slowly becoming okay with that, with the idea that you are in fact gone, weather that be for now or for forever.
I still often wonder how you are doing though, and I check in on you from afar. I only hope that you are doing as well as you used to be, and you are carrying on. I hope you still have the call for adventure, and a sparkle of mischief in your blue eyes. But I miss you more than you’ll ever know. I miss us, our adventures, late night conversations, and most of all I miss my best friend. I hope we cross paths one day in the future, for you will always hold captive a large part of my heart.
February has brought about the time to create senior pages. I have spent time scrolling through my camera roll, searching for the perfect photos that can encapsulate four years of high school into a single 8″x10″ page.
I found photos of my friends. Photos of projects I had done in art class. Photos I had taken for AP World History projects. Sifting through hundreds of memories to find the most valuable moments has proven to be more difficult than I had thought. I have narrowed it down to about forty photographs, which, if I were to use them all, would be about a centimeter wide each.
While small on paper, many memories still remain as vivid as the day I experienced them. I remember carving pumpkins at my freshman Halloween dance. Is that memory less valuable than the time I hung my art in an exhibit? Do I feature friends, experiences, or accomplishments? What photograph will take up the most space?
As I sift through the photos, I imagine what words will be written on a page. I could write a classic senior quote, a thank you to those who helped me through school, or simply my name in a basic font.
I know my senior page will encapsulate my high school experience as I remember it. I just need to find what moment will serve as the biggest picture.
Have you ever heard of those little boxes where people store their favorite keepsakes from their first love, a corsage from a school dance, a sunburnt polaroid with their best friends smiling, a love letter from a lost relationship, a ring, or even a rock from an unnamed location.
Its so sweet to think how people house and store these little insignificant items in boxes that sit for years and years under beds, or at the top of a shelf that doesn’t see the sunlight just because these little items hold so many incredibly dear memories.
I think everyone should keep items from their past, because there will always be a day when you want to go back and look upon life before you became the person that you are today.
Personally, I regret ridding my life of my first love letter, jewelry from my first love, pictures from movie theater photo booths, corsages from some of the best nights of my life, rocks that I deemed beautiful, pictures that were drawn for me, and little odds and ends that reminded me of people. I wish I would have taken a moment to reflect and think about how significant these little things would be down the road.
Have you ever wanted to escape reality and live in an imaginary world? Well, I have. Through books and my wild imagination, I have been to many places.
One time I escaped to Hogwarts and it was amazing. I got to learn different spells and play quidditch, and I became a witch. Another place I escaped to was Australia. I visited the Sydney Opera House and swam safely around the Great Barrier Reef.
Photo credit: About my Brain Institute Blog
My imagination is a weird one. Sometimes I am in a scary mood, so I go to a haunted house, and other times I feel happy so I envision myself as a mermaid.
Escaping is a sort of coping mechanism for me. It allows me to forget about all my struggles, stresses of life, and calm down a bit. Although it is good for coping, I have to remember to live in the real world as well.
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