I don’t think I’ve experienced something sufficiently cathartic to warrant this precious space. That fact, however, was what propelled me to write about every wrong thing about myself and to finally come up with the answer to the biggest question of all: Why? Why have I reached the ripe age of 18 and still have nothing particularly worth telling in my life? My life is a flat line, so to speak.
The saddest thing on this planet is to be young and jaded. I’ve never denied that I’m a hopeless romantic, but I actually think that is one of the best things about me, which isn’t really saying much about my overall personality. I like fiction, and that is the reason I’ve become obsessed with the idea of a happily-ever-after. I love reading about boys who run after girls in an airport and declare their undying love. I love watching movies about two people who’ve been best friends since forever and who realize that they’ve been in love with each other the whole time. I particularly love the trope of “enemies to lovers” stories. I don’t have a bone in my body that feels ashamed of my love for the idea of love; however, I’ve come to realize that I feel content with just watching or reading about these wonderful stories.
Now, I am 18 and I do not have my own story. I think I’ve rescinded my active participation in life and accepted the notion that I’m not a particularly exemplary person—not the worst, but not the best either. So the only hope I have for having even an iota of feeling is through fiction. I love fiction, but I do not believe it can ever happen in real life. I am young and jaded; I hate it.
I don’t even know how I became this way. Maybe the one special thing about me is that I defy Freud’s psychology. There’s nothing in my childhood that can possibly have affected my present state: My life is not eventful enough to have traumatic and mindset-changing experiences.
Sailing by life and taking the path of least resistance have always been my style. I just never felt enough passion, excitement, or any of those feelings of positive reinforcement, to fully immerse myself in something. My thoughts will always run along the lines of “My effort will be wasted,” “What’s the point?” or “Does anyone ever really care?”
I don’t think anything is important, so I always just do the requirements to sustain my current state of living. Of course, I always crave something more; I just don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I really want to become because, as I’ve said, I don’t really have an opinion on what matters on this planet. I just have this wide array of random dreams filed in the “Impossible” folder in my brain. I’ve never even tried. Again, I don’t know why. I guess I’m just wired weirdly: too many dreams, too little feelings to urge my body to actually make them happen.
So here are several truths about me, things filed in the previously mentioned “Impossible” folder: I want to be someone extraordinary. I want to stand in a stadium full of thousands of screaming fans and sing my heart out. I want to pluck the strings on my guitar and have every single person entranced by the sound that I make. I want to stand in court and win case after case. I want to go to an airport and have someone chase after me and declare his undying love for me. I want to be president of a huge organization and have everyone admire me. I want my friend to like me as much as I like him.
I admit that I may have been a bit obsessed with the idea of being known to the world, but didn’t we all want this at one point in our life?
The bottom line is that I have no idea what happened to make me disconnected from the rush of life. I’ve had all these dreams, so why did I let 18 years pass without me taking risks, banging through doors and making people notice that I actually exist? My pursuit of happiness hasn’t exactly been interesting. Sure, I have random bursts of inspiration and moments where I just absolutely hate my mediocrity and actually feel physical pain because of my intense want to do something, anything, outside my normal pattern in life.
Writing this article, for example, is my current burst of positivity in my overall negative state of being. I just really wonder why I stopped being a kid who looked at the world with wide, bright eyes. People often think that being idealistic is such a bad thing, but I actually think that that is what allows us to explore the world, to make mistakes and learn from them. Being jaded is nothing but a shield for people who are afraid of bullets.
I am young and jaded—this much is true. It pisses me off because I always feel like I’m constantly caged in a prison of my own making. The truth is that I am a coward who is always passing up opportunities. I know that I am young, so I can’t really be upset about my life yet. There is this general belief that the youth aren’t entitled to be upset about life because of the simple fact that we haven’t lived long enough to experience real sadness.
What is real, anyway? Maybe this is postpuberty doing its job, but I truly am disappointed by my current state, so what can I do?
I want to stop being this way. I want to be brave and bold. I want to stop being shy and self-conscious. I want to stop feeling like being normal is such a bad thing because maybe, just maybe, being extraordinary is a little overrated. I mean, if everyone is striving to be extraordinary, who can ever excel at being normal?
Maybe I need to scrap being extraordinary from my “Impossible” folder. My life is a flat line, yes. I live on a straight road, yes. The main difference now, I guess, is that I actually want to take a detour. I don’t know what triggered my epiphany; all I know is that it is about time I actually made this happen.
I guess that’s it: I don’t have a story to tell yet. This is my current story, and I hope the next chapter will be much more interesting. I just have to be grateful that I am still young, so the best (or worst) is yet to come.
Shiela Rabaya, 18, is a psychology sophomore at the University of the Philippines Diliman.