A 20 No-Something Year-Old Everyday Tragedy

I was never who everyone thought I was...or wanted me to be. Not really. Yet somehow I was held captive by everyone else's expectations of me. There was no room to move, to experiment, to go wild. All eyes were on me and yet turned away at the same time. Because nothing I did mattered or would change anything in those halls. Safe to say, I called no one my friend although a few girls went out of their way to call me theirs. It was a rare occasion that I spoke more than five sentences to anyone a week.

No one would expect me to be the person I am right now. And that's what I've always wanted.

Every day for the past four years I had observed my life as bland, routine, nothing of great excitement... until now. No one was watching anymore. I finally cast off my mask and started sprinting full force in the opposite direction, to my saving grace, my freedom and in a way, my own solitude. No one need control me from there. No one had access to my thoughts. My actions were all solely my own, based on no one's approval.

I was never who I wanted to be in high school. And now I desperately needed to replace who I wasn't. Here I'd become someone worth talking to and about. Someone who had at least a somewhat intriguing life, takes risks, did what they felt like and didn't feel inhibited by others' views on life. For once in my life, I want to be me.

Navigating her way through college after existing as virtually an outcast in high school doesn't come easily to Aiden. Everything is a new experience. Things others took for granted as "golden year" traditons she missed out on. It was safe to say high school was definitely not the best years of her life. In this new world, Aiden is forced to realize what you want now sometimes compromises what you want most and that handling the consequences for making your own mistakes is much easier said than done.