How Did We End Up This Way

Have you ever wondered when did it all start to change? You know from being that responsible kid, the times when you consider asking permission before you go to the park, strangers weren't allowed in your home, weekends were spent with family and you were full of ambition. I guess the most common answer is that you grew up. Kissing random people at parties no longer seemed like a big deal, drugs are our best friends and we've become almost skeptic about most things. I guess that would be the first lesson bridging the gap from being a kid to a teenager. That you realize nothing is like what you see on TV. I think some of us probably realized that real life is different than films when you hope your first kiss would take place in a garden with fairy lights, your foot will pop like Princess Mia did in Princess Diaries, you'll feel butterflies and actually getting your face mashed into a watermelon breath teenager because of the watermelon flavoured gum he was chewing on earlier, cornered in your kitchen when your parents were away for the weekend.

You thought you knew it all from the many romantic movies you watched on your own because back then you would have to cover your eyes during kissing scenes. Kissing tips on Google seemed like a good idea at the time, "tilt your head to the left and feel comfortable" it said. Now it pretty much sounds like a bullshit typical girl tip for taking selfies 101. You have all these ideas, how things would turn out and then you're there, deciding if your tongue should go in left or right, or are you using too much tongue, should you nibble on the lips or is that weird. Then realization hits when you acknowledge the fact that your "first" isn't anything near what you've dreamt of and every day brings just another problem that needs to be googled like do I shave the hair on my legs or do I wax them, maybe I need to get my teeth straighten out, maybe my eyebrows needs to be done. Every art work on yourself promises a better tomorrow, that maybe you'll get noticed by the person you like, that maybe you actually like what you see in the mirror for a change.

Your opinions are kept to yourself because you don't want to be the different yet you want to be noticed. So every day is a battle between blending in but standing out yet this never seemed to be a problem. You start to reveal more skin after discovering that less is more but you get extremely mad when a 50 year old briefly looks at you with their creepy wrinkly face. But hey that's what time does to you..wrinkles..and in 30 years, that would be us, looking at our kids and grand kids, we'll see how young and flawless they are, longing to go back to that time where you were as free as a bird, undoing the mistakes you did, making wiser decisions and then you'll be mistaken for a 50 year old pedophile for staring too long. 

You make being a teenager sound dreadful but you don't really want to age. You have never ending quotes on how unfair life is or the original copy pasta of song lyrics on your twitter to show people how you feel in what YOU think is the most subtle way of showing but not really showing, "silently hoping" someone will notice that you actually wrote "silently hoping" on twitter, your tumblr is full of teary eyed young adults, Lana Del Ray staring into space with a cigarette in hand, photos of couples either looking super happy (the typical hugging from the back) or the ones where they're so in love that they're not even smiling in the photo because their love is so deep and powerful that they look so content and you feel like Picasso for noticing every little detail in these photos, it's all complicated  stuff but you are able to see the semiotics but fail to acknowledge your mom's puffy eyes from the "TV show she watched last night" or differentiate between your wants and needs and the NOs from your parents because their money is running low and the economy is shit but you feel like no one understands because nothing feels worse than being rejected by your parents yet we're always busy during family affairs. 

You begin to realize having 1000 friends on Facebook and triple digit contacts on your phone doesn't guarantee that someone's going to pick you up if you were stranded in a godforsaken place with your phone almost dying, cash running low so you call the first person you know is going to come. Mom. You begin thinking you're an introvert because you realize everyone around you is full of shit, or an insomniac because you barely sleep and the internet seemed more appealing anyway, you barely have concentration in anything that you do, you text in movies or casually browse through Instagram, hearing but not really listening.

Your definition of love starts to change, something along the line of being romantic like having chocolates when you're sad, cuddles during rainy days and getting dominated in bed. 50 shades of grey kind of stuff.

Then you wonder, how did I end up like this?