Teenage Wasteland

By: Alex

Art by Alex 

April is the cruelest month. We’re so close to summer, but not quite there yet. Instead of enjoying the anticipation of spring, we spend more time planning for a summer we can enjoy and a school year we can benefit from.

Because of all its responsibilities, April leads to me do lots of stuff that I have to do instead of doing stuff that I want to do. So as I spend this month just trying to ‘get it together,’ I waste so much time worrying about my future instead of doing something productive. I want to get somewhere.

 

Because I’m in this weird place in my life, where I have nothing figured out, I don’t feel like I’m getting anything done. I do so much work, filling my days with mundane tasks that are supposed to somehow help me, but I see no benefit, and I feel no preparation. There’s a lot of the boring routine that I must participate in just to be a functioning human. But I don’t like it because I feel trapped.

I spend so much of my day wasting time. I am stuck in this Teenage Wasteland, a vast expansion of nothingness between the comfort of elementary school and the scary opportunities of adulthood. I want to escape the Teenage Wasteland and make my world into fertile ground for inspiration. But my responsibilities and qualms about growing up keep me stuck here. Everything seems impossible.

Now, having no productivity in the Teenage Wasteland is not just because I have too many responsibilities. Sometimes, I lack the motivation to do something worthwhile. Part of that is because of the discouraging feeling that it’s hard to try to get somewhere when I feel like there’s’ nothing attainable to look forward to. But the other is because, it’s just easier. Taking naps or surfing the Internet requires a lot less energy than thinking about my future. Let’s face it, the world is a scary place. The less time I think of myself becoming a part of it, the less anxious I can be. But I hate myself for thinking that way. I depend on experience. It’s just that, sometimes, I turn to avoidance when I’m scared, and the Teenage Wasteland is a great place to go where nothing will happen.

It’s so easy to fall into this cycle: getting scared of the future, doing mindless activities in order to avoid it, getting stuck in the Teenage Wasteland, hating myself for being stuck, feeling unprepared for my future because I’m stuck, and back to the beginning. Though it’s easier to avoid the future, it’s those choices that keep me stuck in the Teenage Wasteland and prevent me from doing something that could matter one day. The Teenage Wasteland is a safety zone, an area where nothing bad can happen. But staying there also means that nothing good can happen.

We will never know what’s out there if we don’t put the effort into something we might fail at. I tried to find hope in the Teenage Wasteland, but it looks like the only hope is the possibility of a way out--- in trying something I might be a little apprehensive about. Maybe there is an opportunity in the new. But I have to escape to figure that out. The exodus is here. The happy ones are near. And Teenage Wasteland will be over soon enough.