In this day and age, it’s incredibly easy to find yourself suffering from a bad case of FOMO (fear of missing out) thanks to social media. We have Snapchat stories of our friends partying, Instagram posts from cool events people are attending, or Facebook location check-ins to just really rub it in that we’re not where we want to be. It’s alright, though, because sometimes we’re on the other side of it. We’re the ones uploading photos and letting people in on our whereabouts and the cool things we've been doing with ourselves. However, there is a different type of missing out that we can’t necessarily make up for. It’s the kind of missing out we are forced to feel through the outlets which provide us entertainment. Television shows and movies have shoved so many classic tropes and coming of age storylines down our throats that when we stand back and evaluate our own lives, we find that they don’t quite measure up to these Hollywood fantasies.

I think of the 2004 film Sleepover, and I remember being convinced my life would play out similarly. I’d have crazy adventures with my friends and someone along the likes of Sean Faris would be waiting at the end of it in my own treehouse for me. I hate to break it to 10-year old me, but I never did get a treehouse or a Sean Faris lookalike. I did get some cool scavenger hunts in with my best friends, but it still wasn’t how I had imagined it. Even at 22, I still fall victim to the make-believe stories I see on screen. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I had gone to school in Texas and lived out my own version of Friday Night Lights with a Matt Saracen. The same way horror movies terrify us because we imagine how we would react given the situation, we place ourselves in the happiest of programs that somehow diminish everything we have gone through. Even when we feel as though we've done a lot, the entertainment industry makes it feel like maybe we have not accomplished enough.

It gets more difficult when you find a character that you find so relatable, the writers must have been watching you for years to come up with their similar attributes. I’ve been told time and time again that I’m Beca from Pitch Perfect or Peyton Sawyer from One Tree Hill. I admit, I love these comparisons because I love these characters. Who wouldn't want to be like these badass females working their way up in the music industry? I love feeling like this could very well be my life if things played out right, but that’s never how it goes. It ends up being somewhat damaging when the climax happens and you see the character growth from point A to point B. It’s not fair to compare your own experiences to theirs because they get to do this in under two hours when you are a continual work in progress 24/7.

If our own lives were really made into a movie or a show, we would also have our story lines wrapped up in a few short hours. We all know that's not the way reality works. We have seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years to progress. It's almost comforting to know we don't have to have things figured out instantly, even if that seems infinitely easier. Most days we endure are the scenes that don’t make the final cut, and that’s perfectly fine. You’re still in charge of your actions. You can be that ideal character, even if it’s not the one from your favorite flick. Things aren’t so scripted here in reality, but I’m confident in the fact that we all get our happy ending, whatever that may mean to you.