I’m sitting on my bed in my dorm room crying, my Spotify playlist called you are alone playing, and 8 tabs open in the background on travel costs. This is a scene that happens more often than I would like to admit. Sometimes I’m crying over different things, but they all fall under the same point; I’m not happy here. Now, I’m honestly not sure if I’ve been happy anywhere, and I realize that at each place I’ve been at I’ve said I’m not happy there, but that doesn’t make the unhappiness feel any smaller. I try to be happy, I really do, people don’t believe me, but I do. I try my best, anyways. Which may not be good enough, but it’s my best nonetheless. But each time I try, I get my hopes up high, and think hey, this time I might really be on to something. Those days are the worse than the sad ones, because I end up crying harder than usual.

I don’t want to be in this dorm room, this town, or in college at all. I don’t want to be in this state, or this country, sometimes- again more often than I’d like to admit- not even in this life. It seems like everyone’s lives are planned out for them from the moment they’re conceived. Go to kindergarten and elementary and middle school, make friends, get good grades, don’t misbehave too much, prepare for high school. Go to high school, get even better grades, try not to be so dramatic, figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life, get a job, prepare for college. Pick a college, pick a major, pick a job, get good grades, be independent, if you’re lucky get a boyfriend, get engaged, get married. Graduate, find a place to start a career, buy a house, have some kids, raise your kids to live the exact same life as you. And coming above everything else, money.

I never wanted to go to college. I had always been miserable in school; why would I want 4 or more years of it? But I kept getting told that if I wanted a good future, and a good job, and a family, and to be happy, I had to go. So here I am, and I’ve wanted to leave since the day I got here. And every day I spend here I have less motivation to do what’s expected of me, and more motivation to die. No one can understand how I could even think about being unhappy here, because I have a 4.0. To hell with that 4.0, I wish I would’ve gotten straight D’s my first semester so I didn’t feel like I was disappointing everyone each time I get a B. And why, jobs don’t even look at your college gpa after you graduate. You know what they all look for? Experience. You know what I’m not getting here? Experience.

I just don’t understand why you have to go through so many steps in order to have a happy future. And I don’t get how a happy future can even matter if your present is miserable. Like, right now I don’t even want a future that’s how hopeless I feel, so why the f*** am I at a place working my ass off for the sole purpose of having a good future.

Everyone else around me seems to be having the time of their life, college is supposed to be one of the best times of your life, but every day I just think there has to be more than this. I mean hell, I’m only 18 and my entire life is working and school. I’m not looking forward to summer, because I’m going home for a month to get my driver’s license, then coming back to this god forsaken town that has nothing in it for me, and moving into an apartment with  my boyfriend who I’ve only been dating for 6 months but I love to the moon and back, and then starting a new job, quitting my one at home that I actually enjoy because it doesn’t pay enough. And it’s all going by so fast and no one ever stops to ask what I want, other than my boyfriend- but what can he do to change my future if I can’t even change it. And when I interrupt to say what I want, I get told that I can do that after. After what? I work more and get money, I graduate, I settle down, I retire?

All I want to do is travel. I want to see the world and everything it has to offer. I want to stop feeling so stuck, I want to be free. America, land of the free, f*** that every single one of us is stuck in this country and most of us never do anything about it. And f*** doing nothing about it, because I can’t take watching my life go by knowing that I could have done so much more.

I know there is more out there, there has to be. But if I spend my whole life waiting until it’s a good time or I have a comfortable amount of money, I’ll never go anywhere and I’ll never be happy.

I want to see France, New York- the only city in this country that really matters to me, Greece, Rome, Italy, South Africa, Canada, England, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Belgium. I want to get on a random flight and end up wherever I end up. I want to take pictures of the wonders the world has to offer. I want to write about my experiences. I want to learn the languages just by being surrounded by them. I want to live.

I’m not living right now, not really. Sometimes I think about killing myself like I used to, but I never dare attempt, because now that I’m an adult, If you don’t succeed in dying, you don’t get help, you get a visit to court to see what your punishment should be for trying to escape all the pain and hopelessness. So I can’t live, and I can’t die. I’m just stuck doing following the same routine that I’ll probably do until I’m dead with minor changes, but hey, at least I’m making other people happy right?