Life in the 14s

It’s funny I have so many thoughts and ideas rushing through my mind anytime and about anything but once I find myself to be in front of a blank page I’m just blocked. I think about what I want to think too much. Does that make any sense? Well, probably not. Oh by the way, thank god autocorrect exists on Word, I would be doomed otherwise and very surely thought of as stupid.

I have a problem. I have a lot of initiative; I want to start thousands of projects at once. I want to be everywhere, do everything and invent what has not yet been invented. I want to take action. And that is my problem. I never finish what I start, or I rarely do anyways. I started writing this book about a teenage girl and it was just so awful I stopped writing 10 pages in. It was painful to read. I also wanted to start this book about teenagers’ problems, and make a list.

A list like, number one: When you wake up and you have 5 minutes to get ready, number two: When your parents ground you for a stupid reason… and so on.

This idea didn’t stick for very long. I do have this thing for lists though. I make some on every occasion I get. The most obvious lists I do are the ones of what I’m going to take with me on a trip, what I need to put in my schoolbag or what I need to do, but sometimes it just goes out of hand. The crazy lists, I make them in my head.

People already think I’m not “normal”- what is normal though? - I don’t want to appear crazier than what they think I am. The funny part of this sentence is if you know me, you’ll soon see that I do not care about what my peers think of me as much as a high-schooler should.

If it can reassure any of you, I do have the symptoms of most teenagers. I love talking about myself and my problems, I am terrified about my future and also extremely lazy, I watch over 25 TV series and therefore spend most parts of my days on my computer. I have terrible posture and do my homework at the last minute and anytime I can, I upset my parents.

A boring profile, you might tell me. And I might agree although I have always thought of myself as an artist. What do artists do, you’re asking me? They do everything and fail miserably but still express themselves through odd techniques. I’m an artist because I love singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting and thinking. I have a very wide imagination, I do not know how to broadcast it however. If I’m being honest here, I am terrible at what is listed, except maybe for acting, which I love above all.

I still haven’t figured out the use of what I just wrote. I am still glad I did write it. I should be working right now, but I’d rather go with my guts, and they tell me to write.

In no way am I a talented writer. I can be a good storyteller but that’s as far as it can get. I still have the need to express myself, and words are art. So as an artist, my tools are words. Of course, writing is an art! I do believe writers to be artists. Just like painters, they create a new universe, a world that they control. They make you vibrate through their art, you are able to feel, through the colours that are sentences and you bond with the characters. Writing is art. It is pure and beautiful.

Some people are gifted and others not so much. It still shouldn’t mean that the ones who can’t do should stop themselves. I am writing this for myself because writing is appeasing, it’s a great way, for me, to deal with panic attacks.

A seventeen year old with panic attacks? You have heard right my friend. In today’s society, stress is what fuels us. We worry too much and don’t enjoy the fleeing time enough. How hypocritical of me, isn’t it? As expected I shall answer with a capital NO. I am frightened because of food, so it has nothing to do with what I just wrote. Or maybe it does a little but I don’t want to admit it.

Anyways, I am writing this for me and if anyone judges, feel free to do so.

After going through a lot of bullying from age 11 to 15 I can safely say that people who hurt me help me. They make me ready for what is to come, they make me ready to be rejected and hurt again and thrown away without being noticed. I thank them. What I went through will allow me to get back in the saddle as an adult, what I went through made me who I am (This is the part where I won’t go: I’m a strong independent black woman who doesn’t need a man because although I think of myself as strong and I know myself to be a woman, I am not black nor independent- at least not yet).

My mind has wandered to how materialistic I really am. I am very materialistic. I love my computer, my bracelets, shoes, clothes and make-up and I feel inner joy when I get something new. I felt wrong for a few months having those feelings towards such meaningless objects. I then realised that the circumstances in which I grew up were not my fault and if I got lucky and have nothing to complain about, then I should feel privileged and in no way guilty.

I am not ready to be detached from society and I admire people who actually are, but we each have our own path to follow. It is not because you admire someone that you are ready to do the same thing as they, and in the same extent.  So I admire people who are able to control their urge to consume or people who do not feel that urge at all.

As I said previously, I am the usual teenager and when I enter a shop, it looks like wonderland. There are so many places I want to visit and so many activities I feel like I need to do, but I never think about how much they cost. When I go groceries-shopping with my mother, I never look at the price of what I’d like to eat and when I saw others did, I then understood how extremely lucky I was and how hard I needed to work in order to get myself this sort of lifestyle.

I put an extreme amount of pressure on myself, simply because I want to succeed extremely badly. It does not couple well with my irresponsibility however, which leads to me frantically thinking of where I might or will end up. I want to get somewhere but enjoy life at the same time. How extremely greedy of me. How innocent. I very well know it is not possible, yet I still dare to dream one day I will have my very own Empire and still be able to have lots of free time.

I don’t even know what I want to do for the rest of my life- and here is another absurd example of the ridiculous choices we have to make at an age where all that worries us are our hormones. I have a feeling that after this sentence, teens from around the world will riot about the stupidity of what I just wrote and the stereotypes I encouraged. Now, back to what I was talking about:  my unsure future.

Growing up in a world in the middle of an economic crisis, I am terrified. Not only do I need to think about what I wish to do for a significant portion of my life, but also about if I will be able to find a job, and if so where it will lead me. Now I am starting to see more clearly the purpose of this long rent: to show kids in fifty years, what it was like to be a teenager in the 2014s.