Sixteen. The epitome of the teenage life. Heroines of most of my young adult genre stories have been sixteen. Katniss, Hazel Grace Lancaster, and more were my instruction guides on how to lead a successful year as a sixteen-year-old in society. I am fully aware that what I read is fiction, but my expectations for the sixteenth year of my life included getting a super handsome boyfriend, easy schoolwork, and just overall a fantastic year. It was not quite exactly like that to be completely honest.
To start the year off, I did not have a huge party including a huge dress and having everyone from school attend. Maybe I wanted one, but being someone who is considerably low on the social ladder, I found myself wanting to have something smaller. So, I invited 4 friends to a day out in New York City. It was fantastic. We went to Madame Tussauds, Planet Hollywood for dinner, shopped in Times Square, and might have had a mini panic about getting on the train in time. I enjoyed myself tremendously, and although I wish I could have worn a fancy gown, having only my closest friends there instead was the best decision I ever made.
Needless to say, school was not as much fun. In fact, my sophomore year was chaos. I did not have any teachers I thoroughly liked, and for the majority of the year, I gave in and did not try anymore. I began to dread coming to school and developed many anxieties about grades and colleges. Sure, I tried blaming it on the teachers I had, but the majority of the fault was on myself. I began to have a mindset for many of my classes that I was not going to get a decent grade anyway, so why should I try? I took long naps after school because I would start my homework at midnight or later, I put on a lot of weight, and I stopped reading. I do not believe I have ever been more insecure than when I stepped on a scale in the spring and saw I had put on ten pounds to my body. I lost motivation to complete any task given to me, and just accepted the Cs and Ds as they came.
For some reason, it made sense in my mind that life got easier at sixteen. Completely illogical thought, I understand. Movies and books just taught me that life got easier at sixteen, whether or not that was when an apocalypse would occur. I craved an adventure out of my whitewashed small New Jersey town. I am not exactly the most outgoing person in the sense I am not confident when I talk to people I do not know. So while other teenagers are talking to strangers and making new friends, I choose to stay inside with my family and read books. Maybe it is because I do not want others to think I am annoying or boring, but even when my family got to go on a cruise for the first time, I was reluctant to meet new people, even though they had set up an entire lounge for teens on the ship. There went my whirlwind Disney romance of the Winter.
In reality, I do not really need a boyfriend, nor do I want to have one. That is like way too much work. Guys in high school are not Prince Charming and the ones who might be remotely worth dating would never take second looks at me. I am okay with that now. Before I wanted a boyfriend, because I thought that was the key to curing all my insecurities, but the "major key" is to surround yourself with close friends who care about you, and are always there when you need somebody. If sixteen has taught me anything, it is that friends are more important than anything else in your social life, and drama is the stupidest concept to be in existence in high school.
My goals for seventeen are to participate in more extracurricular activities, volunteer more, get high grades, and to begin to accept myself as who I am, and not as who I think I am supposed to be. I am not in a story, I am in real life, and it is about time I accept the fact and stray from my books as expectations for real life. I can write my own storyline, where I can grow to be anything, and I can create a life where I am content with the decisions I make.
The End.
