Youth!

Get In My Head

When you're young you learn a lot. Particularly during my late teen years, I learned a lot about myself, and who I wanted to be, and it all came from meeting new people and my interactions with them. My seemingly boring life got a whole lot more interesting, and a factor that had been missing in my life came into play: Women! I'm gonna tell you a story!!!

    Let's head back a little bit....

    ***********

    I was seventeen, and life was full of excitement. Done with high school and done with the bullshit it carried. I was basically free until I started college and had the world at my fingertips. I could go anywhere I want, hang out with whoever I wanted, and do whatever. Eventually I learned there was a limit to how much was going to get done without any money, though. Yup, I was dead broke. I'm talking I could shake my wallet upside down and nothing would fall out except a few pieces of lint and a quarter broke. Being in quarantine had given me the opportunity to brainstorm ways to make money, but with things not being fully opened up yet, jobs weren't nearly as common as they'd end up being a good 6 months later. I tried to sell useless possessions of mine, and did end up hauling a good $700.....that I wasted. This was a common theme throughout my teenage years. I don't know what was wrong with me, I just had absolutely no concept of saving money unless there was a  goal in mind, like a game console, shoes, designer belt, or.... Motorcycle? Yeah, that was the one thing I had my sights on buying in the future. In any case, by this point it wasn't summer yet, but it was early on in April, so the sun was out a lot more, spring was fully in the air, and the weather was good. Unlike how April usually went, it didn't even rain that much from what I can remember. Despite having so much at my disposal, I barely had friends who were going out, most of them were forced to stay inside by their parents and a lot of them weren't allowing visitors. On one hand this made sense, because of the times. At the same time, I wasn't about to let some virus stop me from being a young man, I could care less what anybody had to say about it. I would ride my skateboard, smoke so much weed I could barely find my way home, and most importantly hang out with Jake. Jake was a couple years younger than me and had gotten into some trouble his past 9th grade year and ended up not returning to the school.
He was a good kid, though, just doing dumb shit hanging out with people who were on the same timing. He looked like he was at least my age, had a full beard and everything. The funny thing was, I was damn near three years older than this kid! Did I act like a chaperone though? Hell nah. A complete kid with Jake, that's what I was. A lot of people my age seemed to be the ones staying inside not really accomplishing anything. Even if I wasn't getting rich or getting a degree or making some type of life changing accomplishment I still wanted to spend time outside chilling with a good friend who helped take my mind off all the unpleasant aspects of my life. See, the previous year I started spending an overwhelming amount of time obsessing and worrying about life and what I was doing with mine, to the point where I didn't even know what reality was. An existential crisis, if you will. This can be very dangerous, especially if you're idle, because it can consume you and make life feel meaningless. I was a sixteen year old with nothing going on, and nothing helped relieve me from these thoughts and feelings with the exception of getting out, be it with friends or by myself. It wasn't until I got older that I actually learned what was wrong with me and developed some ways to cope with it, but the time period of not knowing was just my brain going crazy on me everyday and it was really frustrating. Jake, living a good distance away made it so that on the walk to his neighborhood I could relax, process my feelings, and listen to music overall just vibing out on my way there. Then whenever we hung out we'd smoke weed and talk about what we had in mind for the upcoming future rather than long-term life plans. I'd tell him about what was going on in my head and even though he couldn't relate, he told me I'd be fine with a smile, and I believed him, so instead of stressing we'd just have fun and have new adventures everyday, exploring the towns. There was about half a year before my childhood ended and I was determined to make the most of things instead of being depressed all day. As a seventeen year old, I was spending a lot of time outside of my house to distract myself with the fears and questions that really bothered me, such as future life, death, and love, but in a way it had an inverse effect. I started to disconnect from my family due to being out so much. Which makes sense, the less time you spend around people, even your own family, the more you start to feel alienated from them. I loved my parents, and my grandma, but they just didn't seem to understand what I went through. My mom was a beautiful soul full of life, rarely had I ever seen her sad, or down, for her, she doesn't seem to believe in depression. Or if she does, it's just not a reality for her. My dad understood, there was just a lot in the way of being able to communicate myself to him. As for my grandma, she was very religious....and very old school....so I think you can make your conclusion there. Of course, the weed everyday didn't help things, it just served as instant gratification. I had been warned around the time I started smoking that it could lead to loss of motivation, disconnection from reality, especially if you already deal with mental issues as is....but I didn't really acknowledge these warnings until I started experiencing some of these things myself. My brother is the one who helped out big time when it came to my mental anguish and would always distract me from these things, and he would relate my experiences with how he felt at my age, and said that over time the feelings I have will pass. He was 23 at the time and said that he was currently living his best life, so that gave me inspiration to carry on in hopes of better days.