Personal reflections
Here’s What It’s Like Being a Teen Today
It is not all fun and games anymore
When you think about your life as a teenager (some of you still are), you usually picture drive-in movies, driving with loud bops coming from the car your parents bought you or sneaking out of your parent’s house at midnight. For the average teen trying to start a life of their own, now it’s all about student loans and rent and insurance. It is hard to advance in life at a young age when every adult thinks you’re incapable of understanding the common way of life, but that’s just a stereotype.
Today’s teenager isn’t given the privilege of happiness anymore.
Money doesn’t mean much to you growing up — for all you know it could grow on trees. I don’t mean to make this into a sappy article about finances and world problems, but do most people expect teens to have everything figured out by the age of 18? I certainly don’t have anything figured out; sometimes it feels like I’m grasping at a future I don’t even know if I’ll get to see. All I want to do is go to Disneyland but we all know I can’t because money doesn’t just materialize out of thin air, yet.
Why is it just expected of us to move out of our parent’s house and live on our own for the first time in our lives once we turn 18?? Most animals indeed leave their mother’s side at a younger age than humans, but I am pretty sure we aren’t animals.
Most youngins grow up counting down the days until they are finally an “adult” and living it up in college; what we don’t realize is that we will soon have to pay our credit card bills and taxes each year. Being an adult isn’t fun at all unless you surround yourself with “the life of the party” people and sometimes those people aren’t even enough to satisfy your craving for adventure.
For me, I’ve learned to create my happiness and found ways of escaping the daily cycle of making money and spending all of your paychecks in one sitting.
Of course, I miss my family almost daily, but I know if I don’t face life headfirst I won’t ever get to where I want to go. Everyone wants to be successful; I want to be successful AND happy. Is that too much to ask? I didn’t think so, so I brought the party to me, and by that I mean I go on sunset drives and drink iced coffee on cold winter days while still, of course, attending classes and working. Looking back on my life, so far, I would say I’ve had some pretty wild adventures, but just thinking that isn’t satisfying enough for me.
I sometimes imagine what my thinking will be when I’m 25 and “mature” because today I feel as if I am a 25-year-old living in a 19-year-old’s body. Some of my friends may think I’m lame for being so “wise” but how else am I supposed to survive in today’s sinking oblivion?
Sadly, I don’t have the answer to that. I’m not that wise!
