the phrase “you can be whatever you want,” is the biggest lie we’ve ever been told and everyone knows it. but we keep feeding this idea to today’s youth to give them the same sense of false hope our parents once gave us.

and doesn’t that really bring back memories? the first time you realized you weren’t going to be a world famous spy or a princess. you were probably 12 or so when your dreams got crushed in the fists of reality, thrown onto cold wet concrete, and were left for dead.

because at 11 years and 11 months your only real concern was how you were going to meet that prince you would soon marry, but now your main concern is how you’ll pay rent if this job interview doesn’t work out (for a 9 to 5 job in an office building, that didn’t seem to show up in your princess fantasy).

and sure some people may say oblivion is bliss, but wouldn’t you rather be in the know earlier than drowning in anxiety that seems to be holding you under the water for just a minute too long at the age of 18, when your life comes crumbling down because you were point 3 away from your four point O GPA.

and the phrase “you can be whatever you want,” comes back again. but no, you don’t understand, a 3.7 won’t get me into the college of my dreams. but even if I had a 4.0 it wouldn’t have helped me much, as I would have been denied either way because of the crippling anxiety that creeped up on me at age 12 when I realized that I have bigger things to worry about.

oblivion is bliss they say, but I would have rather been told before I reached middle school that I might not be able to be whatever I want to be and that… that’s okay. I would have rather been told that life is basically Hell on Earth sometimes then been met by reality putting up its iron fists and giving me a black eye in the third grade, when he told me how hard it was actually going to be to meet that prince I would soon marry.