16. That’s the age Christmas stopped feeling the same. I woke up; I was groggy eyed with my hair a knotted perfection. The motions of the day were all the same, the feeling was gone though. The happiness of staring out the window and thinking “Today is Christmas” was gone. Even the night before I didn’t feel anything. But to be completely honest that’s just what a teenager tends to feel, nada. Not to say we have no heart but it seems that we use less of it, except when it comes to hot guys and clothes. Then we are all over it. *Insert winking face* The presents were opened and I felt disappointment rather than satisfaction. I would never feel disappointed in the presents, those sort of material things don’t matter. Instead the loss of the joy and carelessness was what I felt. Not only am I disappointed in not feeling a child’s joy of Christmas but also in myself, for allowing my life to get to the point where I don’t even love Christmas. It used to be my favorite holiday, closest to my birthday. A week after to be exact. 16. When I started feeling empty.

In high school nothing is stress free, you’ll never see an English teacher have that on the vocabulary list. Nor do I believe that any teenager can truly grasp the concept of it. If these four years are the best of my life, then I will be disappointed. The people who believe that, must truly have crappy lives. Its stressful, life consuming, and borderline (if not totally) insane. I feel like to get through it all I almost have to be empty. Because if you start to feel some of the stress, the rest will topple on and you will sink in your own despair. But then I started adopting other theories, like if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all, and then I became silent more often than not. I guess I have a lot of mean s*** to say.

I worry about myself. It worries me that all I want to do is be in my room and watch television all weekend. It worries me that I can be in a room full of people but feel as though it wouldn’t make a difference if I wasn’t there. I worry about myself; I do nothing for myself. My day is full of wondering when it will end. 8 more periods, 7 more hours, 2 hours of homework, 30 minutes of free time, 5 hours of sleep, 4 more days until the weekend. It’s all measured and all I do is wait; I don’t even know what I am waiting for. For the weekend? For summer break? To be out of high school? Maybe I’m waiting for a time where I won’t count how many more hours are in the day. I wait for a time when I don’t want the day to end. A time where I live rather than survive.

It’s not that I don’t think I have anything to live for, I just have trouble finding reasons for the day to day. I have no goals to reach; I’m just floating. I don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life, since nothing is fun in school. My mom says that I have to stop saying ‘I hate school’ otherwise there is no chance for me to enjoy it. But when you get a horrific homework load, and your teachers didn’t even teach you have the stuff you have homework on, it is hard not to break down. It is hard not to just sit there and think about how much you hate it all. Because I do. I hate it all. The homework, the little free time, finals, midterms, the best friend who is moving on. It is difficult to handle. To juggle it all. I don’t mean that I have a lot going on, I don’t. But the feelings, the emotions that seems to control my life. It all sometimes feels like too much.

But I will survive until I can live.