from me, to you

i’d like to preface this by saying that yes, this is a rant, targeted at other teens, but also at adults, the former ‘us’ of the world. if you want to stay with me on this then good for you. if not, then good for you as well. 

i hate that we teens have no escape. that’s not me saying life is awful, everything sucks. i’m saying, we have no true escape. 

people always used to say, especially when we were younger that our generation would ‘save the world’, and that felt like it was already a responsibility didn’t it? clearly, as we’ve seen in the media, in every day lives, at different scales, we, in ways, truly are doing that. but we’re doing that alongside handling the responsibility of ensuring that we defy our stereotypes, particularly of how lazy teens are, how defiant we are and how we never listen. ensuring that we don’t lose ourselves to the point that we cannot find ourselves anymore. ensuring that we please those around us whilst trying to figure out how to stay afloat. 

why is it that we have to do that, fight against stereotypes, people’s hatred, at the same time as trying to simply survive? what happened to giving us a break? 

perhaps this ‘rant’ comes from feeling as though nothing i ever do is quite the right thing (again, that’s not me trying to say life is hellish, but more that sometimes it feels as though there’s never a right answer), and as though people find it easier to put their blame/shift their responsibilities onto a group of young people trying to struggle our way through + adapt to a life that won’t wait for us, whilst, being relentlessly scrutinised and subjected to more than some will fully understand. if that sentence felt like a handful, good. that’s what it should be. 

here’s something else i still don’t quite understand. adults were teens once; why do they treat us as if we’re their punching bags? surely, and this is in particular, is for any adult who reads this, if you were like us, at least once (and everyone who makes it to adulthood has to be a teenager before they get there), you’d want to help us understand ourselves, not present us with all your unmanaged issues and daily problems. am i right in saying that? have i got that part right? if so, please, and i don’t speak, obviously for everyone, but i do for a lot of us, let us have an escape. an out, from time to time, space to just be. 

people reminisce on their teen years don’t they? after all, these are meant to be years that we’ll look back on with fond memories, not ones that signify a struggle to just be, feeling trapped in a place with no escape. right? i’m truly sorry to those adults who never had that; i hope you’re finding your escape. but please, let me have mine.