Freedom is a scary thing

I don’t know what I want to do with my life anymore. I’m starting to wonder if I ever did, if I wasn’t just fooling myself. I know that the only place I feel at peace is away from the world, but in this world that doesn’t mean too much. The more I try to figure things out, the less things seem to make any sense. I know I don’t really want to live anymore—not under this world’s rules. But what choice do I have? I’m a sorry excuse for an anarchist; I’m just kidding myself there, too. In the end, I really have no idea whatsoever.

No wonder kids my age make such easy targets for cults, the army, whatever. We literally have no idea what the hell to do with ourselves—we have all this youth, this energy, our passion hasn’t been killed off by the grind yet, and people are constantly telling us to use it, because it won’t last, etc. But we still aren’t set in our identities yet, we still don’t know. I don’t know ANYTHING. All this fire in my soul has no outlet—it’s just burning me, right now, consuming me from the inside out.

That, and every time I turn around, someone’s trying to push some huge choice on me. “Do you like going to school—would you rather spend every day working in a factory for sixteen hours?” I did not realize those were my only choices. “Work hard in school, or you’ll wind up breaking your back struggling for a living for the rest of your life!” Of course, that’s what you’ll do anyway, this just gives you more choice in how. And then there’s living on the fringe, refusing that whole ‘work for a living’ lifestyle. Which, in the end, is just as much of a prison, and it doesn’t last indefinitely anyway.

I don’t want to live like this. Part of me really wishes I could die before I get into college, so I don’t have to make these choices. Then I realize that that would mean that this would have been my whole life—misery, basically, with little cracks of light showing through here and there. If I don’t get out of this house, I’ll wish I died the day I was born.

So that leaves me right back where I started from, with a day of freedom looming over my head, but no idea what to do with it when it gets here. I have no plan, I have no idea, I’m left clinging to this island of stability that I’ve been trying to get off of since I was dumped here. I should just abandon myself to the current, I guess, and let life take me where it will, but that’s not an easy thing to comprehend. What, just let go? Let go of this life… it’s what I have to do, I guess. If I don’t have a plan now, I’ll just… figure something out. Take things day by day, I guess.

The thing is, no matter how hard I try to think rationally, there’s this seed of panic in me that will not go away, and it’s a pretty scary thing. The rational thing to do, or at least the emotionally rational thing, or at least the thing I would normally do, is talk to someone older and wiser, who’s been here, and ask for help. But I know what they’ll say, I think. Maybe not, but for the most part “Yeah, no one really knows what they want to do at your age.” Most kids switch majors halfway through—I used to have the statistic, but I no longer remember it. “Just take things one step at a time; you’ll be alright.” Depending on who I talk to, I’ll get variations of that, along with different advice and ideas and whatnot. My dad might be upset with me, he doesn’t know how much time I’ve wasted in school, and his reaction would be the most surprised, but he’d wind up saying the same thing.

And, once more, right back where I started from. Stuck in a panic, about to be set adrift, with no idea whatsoever what I’m going to do with my life.