SnapShots of a Teenage Life

It's great to be young... isn't it? Basically a study in depression. You have been warned.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

C.

Fuck you.

Fuck me.

Fuck everyone. 

... At least, that was originally how I planned to finish this story. I fantasised about writing those lines, publishing this story, and then killing myself. I thought that at least I can let my pain be known before meeting my end. At points, I wondered whether I'd even be able to get it finished; there were times where I had a plan for my death in the immediate term while writing this. It was hard to open up to others about my feelings - when I did, people thought I was a drama queen and attention-seeker. They paid no attention, or distanced themselves from me, because my constant negativity was a burden. It was hard to find friends; at one point, I was completely isolated at school and had locked myself in one of the empty conference rooms, knowing that if I had the means, I would have killed myself right then and there.

Luckily (or unluckily some might think, who knows) I got through it. Eventually I escaped the mentality of constant negativity - but some are not so lucky. A girl in my school, two years younger than the current me, killed herself this year. The neighbouring school have had about three suicides in the past ten years. I don't think the schools even report them, in shame, and they just end up being local well-kept secrets.

I'd like to tell you that it gets better. That if you just stick through it, you'll find yourself happy in the long run. If I said that, I think I'd be lying; because what is happiness? It's different for every person, and sometimes, you may never even achieve it. Maybe the only way for you to escape the cycle of pain IS death. A girl in the Netherlands starved herself to death with this belief, unable to get through the trauma of rape.

In my particular example, it has gotten better. I changed myself, and somehow the world changed with me. While I still have errant thoughts, I no longer wake up every morning wishing I was asleep - there are activities that I enjoy, and while I still run into trouble occasionally, the frequency has decreased to a manageable amount. Having people I can depend on and trust to try and cheer me up has helped as well. The intensity of my emotions has lessened, and that's a relief, too.

I want to enjoy life. There's no greater meaning to it - from my atheist perspective, anyway - and my life will end eventually. There's no reason to rush. 

I'm sure I will still have musings and interesting experiences as I enter my twenties. But for all intents and purposes, this story ends here - with the closest to a "happy ending" that I can manage. 

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCIX.

For some reason, I always feel inclined to write when I'm being productive as opposed to when the days slur together, with nothing for me to do. As I'm completing an online financial qualification for free via University computers, now is one of those times.

I have three first cousins: one from my mother's side, and two from my father's. You see, my father's sister has two children, one of which I've met maybe once or twice in my life, and the other who I played with (babysat) when I was in the earlier stages of teenage-hood. The story I am about to divulge pertains to him, and his mother (my aunt) who I may have mentioned once or twice previously.

You see, this aunt specialises in producing awful, failed, movies, funding one of the most hated producers in my home country, on the basis that her son has a major role in each of the movies. So he grew up, surrounded by C-list actors from a country that has a negligible movie industry, dreaming to some day make it big in the shining milieu of Hollywood. And I grew up a bit earlier than him, observing my aunt's extravagant lifestyle, the designer clothes, first-class flights, expensive jewellery.

She bought me a silver Tiffany necklace when I was eleven, a simple fishhook ornament on it. I loved it so much that I decided to collect other silver ornaments, and have this be the only necklace I wore - after all, no one had given me such an expensive present before, I was never tasked to keep anything like it safe. A few years later, she got me a Gucci bag - and I heard her telling my grandma how it was over $1000. Of course this alarmed me, so I didn't wear it anywhere expect for the most special of occasions!

My father went to the store with one of the Louis Vuitton bags that she had gifted him, only to be informed that it was a fake, and that they wouldn't fine him for that as he was clearly clueless about it. My Tiffany necklace lost its silver colouring, the bronze shining through. It was all fake.

Every single present she's given me has been a fake, although I'm told that she buys the real deal for herself.

It's not the fact that it wasn't as expensive as I thought it was that killed me - it was the lie. I treasured her present so much - only for her to lie to me about it. After finding this out, I threw out all her stuff - never again do I want anything from her, real or not.

Luckily for me, it's easy to cut the connection with her. If I don't want, I'll never have to see her again. So that's it, as far as I'm concerned.

One fun thing about getting older is watching the children you've babysat grow up, too. I can finally have conversations with my cousin on the same level, even though he's four years younger than me. He's old enough to have experienced depression, and suicidal thoughts, and realised how awful his parents are. A common trait in our family.

Unlike me, he can't escape.

His father is the equivalent of a gold digger (my cousin calls him a mosquito, a blood-sucker), who dumped his ex-wife after she ran out of inheritance. His mother is one of the most self absorbed people I know - and views him as property. I was horrified to learn that in one of their fights, she told him that if he wanted to leave, he had to leave naked, because even the clothes on his back belonged to her.

Pretty damaging, if you ask me. He says he's biding his time until he can escape, and plans to cut contact with them and never talk to them again; I can empathise, as once upon a time I had similar thoughts of wanting to escape myself. 

Unconditional love is a lie. Sometimes, family isn't what's most important. Sometimes your parents don't love you. That is a tough pill for most people to swallow - especially on those who bask in the security of blood-ties - but it's true. And while that may be the case for you, you don't have to lose hope: if I can find some strangers that love me for who I am, despite having no blood relation, I'm sure you can too.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCVIII.

It's weird being back home for the summer. The memories from the past keep popping up when I least expect them; the distance between me and the people I hate seems to have grown closer in my head. I just want to forget. Why is that so difficult?

To be honest, I've already forgotten about the compulsive liar that I tried to befriend. Yeah it was a shame... but somehow, the hurt is missing. I still hurt when I think about school, but even though the University shenanigans have been more recent... it feels like it didn't even leave a mark on me. 

I've met up with certain people from school that I like. Yes, surprisingly, such people exist. I found out that there was someone else having a birthday party around when I was turning 17, which is why no one could be bothered to come to mine - remember that? I wasn't invited to that one, of course. Even though this is over two years ago now, it's still painful. Is it because I've found out about it just recently?

I know that it's my fault. It's not too difficult to have friends and be invited to things such as parties - at least on the surface. The problem with me wasn't that I was inherently unlikeable, it was that I didn't want to be liked. I thought there was no point - we're all going to move on, and then what? Emotional attachments cause pain.

Loneliness causes more pain. 

Maybe betrayal of trust causes the most pain, because I still wonder about her -I even managed to stalk some of her new social media accounts that she's using a new pseudonym for. I found out that she still thinks about me too - insults me in her tweets that she thinks that no one relevant will read. I don't know whether that makes me feel relieved (that I haven't been forgotten, just as she hasn't) or confused - what was it exactly that I did to her? I guess the state I was in at the time was too much for her to handle which is why she turned away - but why blame me for that? I think I'll never find out.

In all the stories (movies, books, tv shows, whatever), people important to each other meet by coincidence. All the stories are fake. The world is a big place, and you don't meet someone by accident - only by "accident". And some questions, like the ones I have, will be unanswered forever. That's reality. So the best thing for me to do would be to stop wondering.

Unfortunately for me, even if I wished for it, there's nothing to do in this godforsaken place but rot in my own thoughts.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCVII.

Have you met someone whose entire life was a lie? Who tells stories so fantastical, but with such skill and gradual pacing that you can't help but believe them? Who you think you know extremely well - but it turns out you don't, at all?

I met someone like that. 

Remember the "pure" friend I mentioned a couple of chapters ago? Well it turns out that she's anything but pure - the image she projected was an amalgamation of finely crafted masks and deception. I should know by now that most human beings are prone to anger and hatred, and to be suspicious of anyone who denies such feelings, but I don't know how or why I let this particular person slip under my radar. Maybe because she mastered the art of lying about experiences so atrocious that you feel the guilt seep into your being the very second a seed of growth springs to mind.

But let's start from the beginning. How I met her, and the stories she began to tell me, over the space of a year. 

I started getting close to her when I was in a rough patch with my boyfriend - we were having a hard time adjusting to University. I told her of this, and she shared some of her own experiences with me - how she'd been in a toxic relationship with someone who drank excessively and did drugs, so much so that she'd been to A&E with him multiple times. When he was drunk, he'd yell profanities at her, and once he was so high, that he even held a knife to her throat... and this is when she knew to break up with him.

I asked her to show me a picture of her ex, and she did - after which she made me block him, saying that he has an app to check who views his instagram, and that she doesn't want this to trace back to her. At the time, it seemed legit.

We started talking more and more, and she shared stories of her current boyfriend - with whom she was also in a rough patch with. The long distance was difficult, and there was also another girl in the picture. I heard a lot of stories about how he was a jerk, and eventually I was supportive of them breaking up. When they got back together, however, I was unsurprised; it seemed like she had a hard time letting someone go. 

This went on and on, with her expecting me to get mad every time he did something dickish, and with me disliking her current boyfriend more and more. 

At the same time though, there was drama with her family - she told me that she was in the process of getting estranged: her grandfather sexually harassed her as a child, which caused her to speak up to the authorities about it; her mother hated her for ruining her own father's reputation, and consequently her own family started mistreating her (even though they were apparently there in the room as the misconduct of her grandfather was occurring); due to this she had to go to a woman's refuge; and once she got out of the woman's refuge, she took a gap year to volunteer around the world - this was all paid by her father. 

The cherry on top is that she prays for everyone that's ever hurt her and wishes them the best. She only wants to get on with her own life. 

And voila, I present to you the perfect Mary Sue. 

I'm sure there are other details I've missed out - the lies are pretty intricate - and how do I know that they're lies you ask? Surely no one can make up something so horrible. Boy - have I got news for you.

So due to our different approaches, we have gotten into multiple fights. But the last fight was pretty ridiculous: we were together in the kitchen with another one of our flatmates, just discussing different topics. I'm not sure how, but the subject of her ex came up - how he was an example of someone who had a good childhood with parents that were never together. Both me and the other flatmate argued that no, having been brought up without a loving mother and father is bound to cause issues, and this caused her to storm off in a huff, offended. She came back in after five minutes to explain how dare we think that we know him better than she does (as I've mentioned, she's bitched about him many many times about him, has even claimed that he's lied to her in the past) and that he's her friend, not ours. Both of us apologised right there, not wanting to argue over something so trivial. I guess the apology wasn't good enough, because she invited the other flatmate into her room to "talk" and I could hear her screaming through the door about how our apologies weren't genuine, we weren't actually sorry, and that she didn't want to speak to either of us.

To be honest, I was baffled by the whole thing. I didn't want to argue about something so nonsensical, so I made it my mission to apologise as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I wasn't present the next day, so I had to hold off my apology until the day after.

She refused to talk to me the day after. I had to barge into a conversation she was having with the aforementioned flatmate (who she had already forgiven, I guess) and she wouldn't look at me the entire time I apologised. I had already gotten the apology chocolates to go with it, all her favourites, but she refused to accept them. I left them in her cupboard anyway because I don't even like chocolates, but I don't even know whether she ate them. 

After a few days of ignoring me, it seemed like she wanted to get back to normal. Unfortunately for her, I was not ready to go back to normal, as I thought her childish behaviour of ignoring me for days was unacceptable, and it wasn't helped by the fact that she woke me up at 3 am to call me to ask whether I knew what her favourite colour was (apparently she was having an argument with another friend who didn't know) - before an exam. If you want to know the honest truth, I also really couldn't be bothered to deal with something like this during exam season, so I decided to put it on hold until it was all over.

She didn't like that. In fact, she was enraged by me ignoring her, even though she hadn't talked to me since she ignored me through my apology. She would send me passive-aggressive texts, and eventually she decided that we needed to talk. I asked her "what about?" and when I came home, I was privy to a rant to the original flatmate that she didn't know I was there for. In this rant, she exposed her true colours to me for the first time: how she was going to send me a long paragraph and block me, how she was going to go to this event with my friends that I wasn't invited to, how I was a bad friend and ridiculous. 

I was seething at this point, but I still asked her whether she still wanted to talk. She said "I can't be bothered with this anymore to be honest" so I thought that it was the appropriate time to block her, since I wasn't feeling up to reading a massive paragraph of ridiculous accusations. 

But after she unfriended me on other social media her anger shifted: from me, to the original flatmate who "took my side" (as she claims) throughout all of this. And because of this, we somehow got closer and talked about what she'd told both of us, separately.

According to him, it was her mother who held a knife at her throat on the way back from school to the refuge. This was why it was necessary for her to get a restraining order (even though she claims to have gone back to visit London just this year - which again doesn't make sense, because she's estranged. Unless that's a lie as well, who knows at this point) against her. She lied to me in particular about her ex-boyfriend visiting a few months ago - which doesn't even make sense, because I already knew about it in advance and was fine with it - why would she lie and say he didn't after all? Fuck, when I checked the instagram she made me block when I first met her, it turned out that his name wasn't what she told me it was. He also lives in France, not Dubai. And I don't know how they would've met, because he's 25 and it seems like he's lived in France his whole life. She told me he's 22 and they went to school together. 

It just. Doesn't make. Sense.

Apparently the original flatmate once spied some documents that diagnosed her with "middle-child syndrome" or in other words, attention seeking syndrome. I don't know whether that translates to "pathological liar" but it could certainly explain her need for lying.

Although more recently, she stirred some shit up with the original flatmate's friends, and he's doing his best to sort through the lies right now because the scary thing is, that there's a grain of truth in every lie.

It's fucking scary. I don't know anything about her - was everything about her a lie? Is her favourite colour even yellow, like she told me it is? I don't even know anymore. Nothing makes sense, and to make things worse, I can't even ask her because I can't trust anything that comes out of her mouth. Does she believe in what she says herself? Could it be that she's completely crazy?

If I have any advice, it's to stay away. Trust no one until you've known them for at least a year. Make sure that they don't have any information that they can blackmail or manipulate you with. Disbelieve any claims that seem too outlandish without evidence.

I thought I did all of this, but I was wrong - this person slipped under the radar, entirely. Be extra careful - someone could slip under yours too.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCVI.

From my understanding, University is a place to challenge your preexisting ideas. It's where you learn, it's where you grow. It's also where you get called a "demagogue" by a lecturer for frowning in disagreement during a lecture. 

I also got told to read more books, which - fair enough - but to pretend that I am uninformed because I don't read books is a fallacy. In the modern day and age, information is acquired not through going to the library (although it can be) but by searching it up on Google, or even by watching a video about it. In my spare time, I do enjoy reading - just that I enjoy reading fanfiction, which is apparently an unacceptable form of literature, even though published authors can and do often engage in this unseemly behaviour. And in fact, the best piece of writing I have ever read IS a fanfiction, one that is exceedingly long and complex, and really she should've just published it with a different name for the characters, since their personalities were so different from the originals anyway. 

It's funny to me how some adults with authority and high positions can sneer and look down upon the internet, without really understanding in the first place. A particularly poignant example of this is when a branch of the government in one of the most developed countries in the world called upon a man with a huge social media company and asked him asinine questions, like "how does your business model function if users don't have to pay for using this service?".

The nature of consuming information has changed. Whereas before you would have to spend a large amount of time in a library trying to look through an Atlas to see what Poland's capital was in 1895 (it didn't exist back then as a state), now you can find out in 5 seconds by typing it into a mobile device connected to the internet, which just about everyone in a developed country owns. You don't need to know an excess amount of facts anymore (with a few notable exceptions... you don't have 5 seconds to search up information on the symptoms of the man who's dying on your operating table). Instead, you need to be able to glean through a large amount of information quickly, and form an accurate conclusion. You also need more social awareness, as in an increasingly globalised and expanding world, the amount of people that we will meet and need to cooperate with will be greater than ever. That said, some people may prefer to communicate behind their screens, and that can work, too.

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion. Maybe it'll be proven wrong and everyone will return to an era of reading published books, and stop getting their world view from YouTube. In the meantime though, I need to save my degree and do a year of work in 2 weeks. 

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCV.

So far, I've talked bits and pieces about my beliefs and my understanding of the world around me; normally this is entwined with my feelings at the time, or a particular situation I've experienced. Stranger, you've gotten this far and perhaps you already understand everything - but if not, this is the clarification that you didn't know you were waiting for. For this, make sure to put on any black-tinted glasses that you may own.

Nothing matters. This is because there is no inherent meaning to anything, and because ultimately when we die there is only blackness, and well - nothingness. In the grand scheme of things, all of our achievements are ultimately pointless. Which is fine. There doesn't have to be a meaning larger than oneself to get through life; especially not if you adopt a hedonistic outlook.

Hedonism is normally associated with lots of drugs and sex, but you see, it doesn't have to be. Getting high can often lead to misery and paranoia (often you can lose everything) while getting some can lead to STDs and diseases as bad as AIDS - while in time they will become curable, not something I would personally want to experience. The health risks are there. As they are with everything, which is why I espouse moderation and self-control...

But why would you care about health risks if death is inescapable and life pointless?

Fair point. In fact, if being alive is causing you enough pain that you think that you’d be better off dead, I see nothing wrong with killing yourself. 

... Although by saying such an outrageous statement, I do have to clarify: you can’t kill yourself if there are others reliant on you. That brings harm to those reliant on you, and it’s in everyone’s self interest to live in a society that brings us no harm. Again, quite a vague statement, but I can qualify it with: physical violence, neglect, theft, rape, and other crimes that we have already clearly defined as crimes for the good of society. 

Killing yourself is something that everyone admonishes. How could you be so selfish! Is something I’ve heard when I’ve opened up about my suicidal thoughts to loved ones before. If you think that, you must think life is valuable. From the eyes of someone who considers life an an inherent good, you wonder how the crazy people can just throw it away - and if you’re religious, you consider that a sin and you want to stop your loved one from going to hell.

Well. I think you’re the one that’s being selfish, asking someone to live when every day is a pain, when every day they go to bed wishing they’ll never wake up. “It’ll get better, just get through it now,” is another phrase I’ve often heard. And if you’re someone who’d say that well - who the hell are you? How can you promise something like that?

It may get better, but it can just as likely get worse, too.

But to those who are suicidal and reading this, consider this: killing yourself is irreversible. There is no heaven or hell or God - only nothingness - and even if there was you’d be going to hell anyway. And as I’ve mentioned, death is inevitable; life is something that you’ll only experience once. Why not make the most of it? You’re going to die anyway. Live your fullest, because there is no second chance.

I want to travel. I want to experience as much as possible. Because I can’t do that when I’m dead.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCIV.

Since I want to keep this piece of writing as accurate as possible, I’ve decided to share my failures and embarrassments as well as my achievements (how those well weigh up, I’m not too sure...). So I want to start telling you how I started this year, versus how I want to end it, and my shift in outlook.

When I started this year, I was absolutely desperate to get started on the internship hunt, even though I am a first year, and very very green. I remember ending up in the meeting room with a big company surrounded by people doing Master’s and PhD's, simply because I wanted to know about all the companies. I didn’t care who by, I just wanted a job. I just wanted to get started on the career ladder. I wanted to throw myself at as many jobs as possible, and didn’t care what those jobs were, I just wanted to be accepted. And you know what?

I bet those companies could smell the desperation coming from me from miles away. I’m not sure if you know what an incel is, but I was exactly like that, except I wasn’t looking for sex or a long term partner, but a job. And how could that be attractive to any company, if you’re so uncertain of the skills you have to offer them yourself?

So I was rejected from every single Spring/Insight Week that I applied to.

I know, I know. Not what you’d want to hear. There’s lots of reasons for it, I’m sure, but nothing as big as this: the lack of confidence in myself. 

Well, I need to counteract that. I need to start building myself as a person, start making sure that I know that I will be useful to whatever company that hires me - whether that’s by having a job, or by doing some volunteering, or maybe even taking some exams and getting certified in something helpful. 

And next year, I’ll start again. 

You know, I don’t regret it. I think I would’ve done a couple of years ago - this is just showing my shift in perspective (I refuse to call it growth, because I don’t necessarily think that my previous perspective was any less wrong...) - regretted every application I’ve been rejected from. But honestly, I’ve gained experience in that. I even had a phone interview, so I wasn’t rejected by everyone from all the initial steps. I know now what they’re looking for, and I won’t be so caught off guard next year, when I try again with a (hopefully) much stronger application.

So don’t give up: I’m not gonna tell you that you’re gonna exceed eventually, because that could be a lie, but you’re certainly going to have a higher chance of succeeding if you try than if you don’t try at all.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCIII.

I thought we'd left the childish name calling in secondary school. I thought that now that we were in University, we'd come to the realisation that everyone had a unique set of circumstances, and that we'd be able to look past the generalisations and treat everyone individually. I thought wrong.

Today we had a debate about whether to abolish private schools or not. As someone who went to a private school - I've also been to a state school - I went into the debate not sure what the answer was. After all, maybe abolishing them would give everyone a fairer chance - who knows.

I walked out of there vehemently against abolishing them, persuaded not by the side arguing against, but by the side that was arguing for. The Student Union President Elect thought that sending your parents to private school was "elitist and lazy" (why it would be lazy I'm still not quite sure) and that you were disadvantaging children of less wealthy backgrounds that don't have the access to the elite social circles present in private schools. What elite social circle she's talking about I'm not quite sure - one of my schoolmates has decided to train to become a hair dresser. An elite one I'm sure  - but not someone with a a lot of influence to make societal changes.

When I went up to talk to her afterwards, to ask her whether it was something she believed in, she unabashedly said that yes it was. She argued that she wasn't trying to undermine my own personal experiences and that they weren't relevant, even though she brought up her own personal experiences where her parents were both primary school teachers, very hard working, and couldn't afford to send her to a private school. When I said that her comments attacked many people in the room - myself as one of those candidates - she scoffed saying that it wasn't her intention, smiled, and walked away. 

I want to reiterate that she is the Student Union President, apparently representing myself and all others lie me to the University. She's a questionable fit for this role, if she can't even handle a five minute conversation querying her own attacks on over 60% of the student population.

Maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it's because I'm feeling a bit sick, but I walked away very upset by that conversation. I'm no one. I'm nothing. I don't really represent a group, I was speaking about myself. I don't have a fancy role that I've been elected to. But I'm sure that's how this current Student Union President Elect started; maybe I have something to work towards.

And that something is privatising all schools. Fuck the state schools.

(Just joking).

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCII.

The second loose end we've yet to tie in this story is that of my parents' wedding. I had never wanted to watch it before (as I don't like seeing my parents together for whatever reason) but Joe had been rather curious so we watched it together. Now I'm glad I've watched it, because my eyes suddenly opened to things I was blind to before.

Firstly, it was an extremely extravagant wedding in one of the most historic churches of the capitol. The church is situated on the main street of the capital, overlooking the mountain. The reception was held in the biggest restaurant of the capital, in the National Building of Culture, and there were ambassadors, ministers, and even one of the past beauty queens present for the event. My grandmother pointed out some men that were later killed by one mafia branch or another.

Having been raised believing I come from a lower middle class background, this came as a huge shock to me. What was going on? How was my family so well connected with these people? When I lived with my father, he even gave me the impression that we were poor: made me consider the price of the meal I was ordering at restaurants, the price of a watch from a supermarket, and the prices of the various houses they were looking to buy at the time. When I made the transition to live with my mum, it shocked me how she never seemed to make me consider the price of anything. 

So, to find out that it was my father that had all the connections to the wealthy class made me feel extremely confused. Why all the theatrics? Only when I later quizzed him on it did the confusion somewhat clear. Apparently my grandfather was some kind of oil tycoon, and as rich as a man could be back during communism; after all, he was away from the country half the time on business trips to the "West" and they didn't allow just anyone to do that. Also an aside, it turns out that my father's godfather was shot by some Russian mafia over an oil dispute. 

Through my grandfather, my father got to know those sorts of people and got involved with some shady business, which made him anxious to get away from the country. So he did: he moved far, far away and married my mother in order to take her with him. As a result I was born away from his previous hedonistic lifestyle and into his newfound struggle in a foreign land. 

I am very far removed from all of this, even though it was only twenty years ago.  It sounds crazy for me to know that the reason why my own godparents moved to a different country was because they were threatened by one of the current politicians in power. And it is. Crazy, I mean. 

Finding out all of this about my family made me question to some extent whether I really do know everything about myself, and whether I'll ever be able to discover all there is to know about my family. Writing all of this down will certainly help the first goal, but I doubt the second goal is achievable. And if like me you were focused on yourself all this time, maybe you should do some digging: how much do you really know?

Nothing? Thought so.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XCI.

My grandfather was found to have stage one prostate cancer. He's a very healthy man who has yogurt, honey and lemon every morning, but he's also seventy nine years old. Which is why I can't help but worry for him, about whether the medicine that they've made him take will help and - will he survive from this?

I love my grandfather. I don't know of anyone who can claim to dislike him, and most people I know admire him: he's achieved a lot in his life. He's lived through a lot, too: being born into a wealthy merchant family, having all of that being stripped away by communism, becoming successful under that regime, only to have that being ultimately taken away from you with another regime change, the movement into capitalism. He's been the head of all the wood production in his country. He's travelled to Kuwait, America, France, and many more places on business or for leisure, at a time when many found it impossible to leave. He's been all over the country and knows a bit about every city - he can always tell me where I can buy the best pastry from.

When I was younger, twelve, barely a teenager he was the only one who acknowledged my interest in politics, my awareness of the world around me. While other grandparents or my mother would patronise me, he'd take me on walks to get water from a natural mountain spring, hold my hand and talk to me about how bankers were corrupt and how the current policies were outrageous. He's always been careful with his money so I never liked to ask much from him, but when I did, he always made sure to get it for me.

He bought me my first (and only) skateboard.

I don't know why that's a big deal, and why I'm tearing up as I write this. Actually, that's a lie: I know it's because in the corner of my mind, I'm imagining a world without him. Never being able to talk about my new comprehension of economics. Not having him pick out the best watermelon, a skill that he's proud of. Not having many people call him every day, because that's just how much people love him and that's how much he's been able to touch the lives of everyone around him.

I don't pray, but maybe I'll start. If that's what it takes to let my grandfather stay with us for just a bit longer, I'll pray every day to any God who will listen.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

XC.

I have a friend that's too pure for this world. She's been through a lot, and yet she still somehow manages to focus on others, and blinds them with her optimism and good-will. She wants to do charity for a living. When I was feeling a listlessness and inability to leave my bed or my room, she took care of me. 

But we're so different, that being friends with her is a bit difficult honestly.

She wants to be a teacher, have a large family, settle down before the age of twenty-five, believes in one true love, and also believes in God. She sees the best in people, despite how they've treated her in the past. When she's angry at me and offended, she doesn't tell me but tries her best to put it behind her without telling me what I've done wrong (even though I can tell, because she avoids me during that period of time). 

My only question is: how? How has she gone through more than me and managed to retain all of her humanity, all of her goodness? I feel like such a twisted individual standing next to her, and I can't help but feel envious, a feeling that I don't think I've ever experienced before. I wish I could be more like her. 

But to me, the world is a dark place, and I'm suspicious of everyone I meet. I always see the worst in everyone. Most of my thoughts are mired by pessimism, which is why I find it so difficult to wake up in the morning. I project this onto her, and when she rejects it, I feel put out. So does she. We've only had this conflict a couple of times, but while I know I can trust her with my secrets I feel like it's an inevitability that we'll end up clashing, and that we'll end up with a broken friendship.

It sort of feels like that already. 

So I'll do my best to apologise for upsetting her, and then go on my way. It's never good to depend on someone being there, not unless there's something in it for them. They normally disappoint you when you need them the most.

Loneliness is miserable, but it's the best way to avoid getting hurt. And maybe I'll try to make friends more similar to me next time. 

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXIX.

Sometimes you look back at who you were in the past, and experience feelings of deep remorse and humiliation. In other words, you cringe. I have a few such experiences that sometimes keep me up at night, making me shudder in shame. 

The first thing I'd do if I went back in time is change the way I responded to the questions in the Cambridge interview. I think I recorded down my thoughts in this blog actually - I had thought it went fantastically, but in reality, I had dared to call Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations boring. And I said a couple of other foolish things, that no one who really likes Economics would ever say, and if I could please take it all back, I would. 

Another realisation I've come to: I'm pretty sure that I bullied the object of my obsession when I was ten. 

`He was one of the few kids that was nice to me back then, and he always made me laugh. How did I respond? By being super mean to him, stalking his social media even disliking his YouTube videos (and commenting awful things on them!) when I probably watched them over multiple times! How shameful. I must have had zero pride. It was the equivalent of the few boys that used to pull on my hair back then - why did I have to be so mean? 

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I think if I were to meet this boy today, I'd bow when apologising. Or maybe I'd never be able to face him. There's a part of me that's morbidly curious of what he turned out to be, because he was my first and last intense crush. Puppy love can really be blinding and all consuming, making you forget yourself. 

Maybe this was why I never had a celebrity crush. 

Ugh. Rather a celebrity crush than this. I wonder if I mentally scarred that boy for life. I wonder if he's forgotten me completely, if I wasn't as obvious as I think I was. 

One can only hope.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXVIII.

Dreams are like clouds. Constantly shifting, constantly changing, ephemeral, out of reach. They can be changed by simple things like the temperature - too hot, and they dissolve; too cold, and they come down to earth in the form of pouring rain, or gentle snowflakes. Or maybe they come down in the form of misty rain, and take a long time to reach earth. 

My dream has always been to have enough money (earned all by myself) so that I'm comfortable, and can afford the things that I really want: a nice apartment. To go on nice holidays. Maybe eat at a fancy restaurant once-in-awhile. It's not a big dream, but right now it feels unachievable - high up in the sky, like a cloud. Fragile, where the slightest obstacle can pose a threat.

A couple of months ago I met a girl - called Jaida, and my boyfriend actually lost her virginity to her, incidentally - who was 19 and pregnant, having dropped out after a year of University. I think she's keeping the baby, and her family are backing her, as far as I know.

If I was pregnant, and unable to have an abortion, any dreams I had would crash and burn. So at least I when I hit a low, and become aware of how far apart the sky and the earth really are I can console myself with the thought: at least I'm not pregnant.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXVII.

It's been awhile since I've felt like this: the crushing hopelessness, wanting to sleep, wanting to die. To just stop existing. Wishing to have never existed in the first place. These feelings, once so familiar to me, feel foreign - how did I go so long without them? How did I manage to forget?

But depression feels like an addiction. And it baffles me to call it that so easily now - depression - when once I would have denied it vehemently, knowing what my mother was like, and knowing how she made me feel as a child. But that's what is IS, I think. That's the pit that I keep sinking in to, no matter how far I feel that I've walked away from its shores. 

I wish I was dead. A familiar sentence, it echoes through my mind throughout the past few hours. I don't even know what triggered it - but now, it seems like I have lost the motivation to do anything. 

I've always seen University as the end goal. That's why I worked so hard... and now I'm here, far away from home (which is what I wanted). And yet... it feels like all my hard work amounted to climbing the first step of a large ladder. There are so many steps to go, and it looks so steep, the destination - so steep that I don't even know what it is anymore.

Is this how I'll feel like when I get my first career-orientated job? Will I have to drag myself through all these motions again? How many times will I do that until I feel satisfied?

Will I ever be happy?

Probably not.

I dream of the day that someone will just put me out of my misery... but God (who doesn't exist) isn't so kind.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXVI.

As this account will be finished soon, I hope, a couple of loose ends have come to my attention. Firstly: the story about Byron.

I sat next to Byron in Year 11 Maths, and talked to him casually throughout that Year, in a successful effort of escaping another classmate who I couldn't stand. I liked him as he was nice to me, but it was a shallow sort of like - he was a nice acquaintance rather than a friend. Therefore I didn't tell him about moving schools at the end of the year, nor did I tell him I was coming back after two or so months.

But when I came back and talked to him a bit more, we developed a friendship, particularly as everything with my friendship group was going sour. He was one of the few people I could talk to at school; and I started talking to him more and more as the year progressed. He came to be someone I considered a very good friend - one of the very few people that stuck by me as my depression (I'm not sure when I quite came to terms with referring it as that) reached its peak.

In the following year, Upper Sixth I realised something: he had started to like me. It showed in his eyes, the way he was overprotective, and the way he offered to do whatever he could for me. But as my last relationship was a disaster and that disaster was entirely my fault, I told him that I couldn't handle relationships. But still, I wanted to try something out - and that was a huge mistake.

Just because someone is a good friend, doesn't mean that they will make a good boyfriend. Or not even a good boyfriend. A good anything.

I learnt this with Byron.

I invited him to my house where we proceeded to make out and not establish any boundaries. The next day, the entire year knew that I had "got off" with Byron, as he had announced it to all his friends in the common room, even didn't deny a potential relationship in the future.

I was fuming. This was private. I don't like people who kiss and tell - not to the whole year, anyway!

I stepped on his foot.

It was childish, and people in the common room probably thought I was psycho, but I was so angry. Byron was someone who I thought I could trust, and he'd been there for me through a time that not many others had, so how could he do this? He - the ever popular social one with many friends and siblings and no secrets - was confused, and thought that I should be happy that he was proud to get with me, particularly as so many of his friends thought I was "weird" and couldn't understand his persistence when it came to talking to me. We run in completely different social groups, you see. He's a party animal, and while I don't mind going out, I don't run in the same circles as he.

But even after stomping on his foot like a five year old, I hadn't let go of my anger - so I decided to ignore him for awhile, because seeing him made me fume. He, again very confused, tried talking to me and we made up.

This cycle of kissing/more, arguments, ignoring and making up continued for about a month before I had had enough and decided to stop it completely. My "friends" didn't really know what was going on either, and Byron had decided to become friends with my friends, for a reason that he never explained to me. As I was trying to forget about him and ignore him, he was everywhere I was - which wasn't the case before.

At Joe's 18th birthday party, about a month after his actual birthday, everything reached a boiling point. I ended up crying to my ex-best-friend of all people, in some room in Joe's house. It was awful, and I went home early the next day while everyone else enjoyed the snow that is so uncommon where I used to live.

Joe, who worried about me as it was his party, called me the following day to make sure I was okay.

This was how we started talking.

While Byron was being passive aggressive, I got to know Joe more and more. I liked talking to him and spending time with him. At the following parties, I managed to deflect Byron's attention, which wasn't hard as he was starting to make moves on Amicia, another girl in my friendship group.

But I'm not sure he was over me, because on New Year's Eve as I was tending to a very drunk Joe in his room, Byron knocked on the door so hard I thought he was going to break the lock. He got in with a poor excuse, and ended up getting into bed with us, with Joe in the middle. Then it was me in the middle. And then Joe left to go to Ibiza, and I made the mistake of talking and kissing Byron again.

During the night, he told me how much he had liked me, but in the morning he was like a completely different person or rather the person I had come to know throughout my month of ignoring him. Distant, cold. At this point, I decided to chalk up his behaviour to jealousy over my attention to Joe, because of all the history those two had anyway. I asked him to keep that night a secret, and we never spoke of it again.

We still haven't.

While I decided to go on a date with another guy called Sam (again, what's with these Sams?) Joe soon after clarified his feelings for me. We went exclusive eventually (I stopped seeing Sam) and I... well I had no expectations, but here I am now.

Almost a year later, and we're still together. Who would have thought?

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXV.

I went home for the first time last weekend, for my boyfriend's 19th birthday. It's officially his last year too, before he reaches maturity.

You know, out of everything and everyone I thought I'd miss, the thing I missed most, I realised, is my cat. Tundra. With her fluffy grey hair and sorrowful eyes, she followed me around the apartment within arms reach as I went to the toilet and made phone calls. She snuggled me all night, jumped up onto my bed whenever I went into my room and turned on the lights. People say cats don't care about their owners, and well, those people have obviously never met or experienced a cat like mine.

She's lost weight. 

I miss her - and you just can't FaceTime the distance away.

[snapshotsofateenagersigh]

LXXXIV.

I hate University.

It's another step in an increasingly short line of steps (I hope) that I have to take to finally start building my career. But at the same time, while I'm finding a house and filling in applications and building my CV, nothing has changed. 

I'm still stuck here, reading and doing essays about things that I don't necessarily give a damn about. I still can't support myself fully and have to rely on the state, and worse, my mum - who still hasn't sorted herself out either! I feel overwhelmed, and now I have to pay a deposit for a house along with administration fees, and because of everything, I haven't had time to look for a job.

But I'm sorting it out. I sent an email to the finance department, and I'm going to have an interview on Thursday to be a tutor on the MyTutor website - I've even opted into the school scheme. It pays a bit more than minimum wage - 10 pounds - for which I'm grateful for - even though I'm going to have to do a lot more prep for it. Maybe twenty minutes for every lesson. Hopefully the more I get into it, the easier it becomes, and maybe I'll even be able to build my repertoire, and start doing topics which I've covered before. 

It's just frustrating. Durham is an even bigger bubble than the one I just left, because it seems that no one has problems and that no one really understands what a broken family is like. That, or they won't talk about it. 

Universities are more corporate than I thought they were. About half the people here seem to be international - which surprises me, as I thought maybe as everything is taught in English, they'd have a harder time getting in - because they pay higher rates. Everything costs money: from the clubs, to the accommodation, to the University funded events. Which is incredible to me, because they take at least £9000 from students a year - but where is that going to? There are 200 people in my Economics class alone. I'm not even sure I want to calculate the amount of money that a University like this one deals with. Let alone my college. 

Aiming to generate a maximum profit shouldn't surprise me given the subject I'm reading about - but the fact that everything around me has turned into that is depressing on a humanist level. The fact that my time is worthless, that I still - still - after so many years of study, haven't developed skills good enough to get me a job better at a McDonalds is probably worse. 

Worse still, I'm envious. Of students here that have their parents' full-hearted support and are able to study worry free. Of students with parents that had the foresight to care about their child's education, to plan for the shaky future ahead.

People in life tell you that things are meant to get better; than in time, it'll all work out. It's all a lie. Nothing gets better, and the problems pile and pile on, happiness being as flickering and fading and hard to find as a needle in a haystack.