I graduated high school a little over two weeks ago and now I feel obligated to make a profound statement about life and living your teen years to the fullest. I feel as if I need to in order to attach meaning to the past four, eighteen years of my life. If I don’t share my so called wisdom, then were all the nights spent crying worth it? Was all of the self-hatred for nothing? Were all of the undesirable moments just a part of the ebb and flow of life?
As an artist, you are constantly reminded that it’s okay to be broken. Which on its own is a good message, but as the years have gone on and our own sick ideas of individuality have formed, that statement has turned into a green light for trauma olympics. Now you are unable to be an artist unless you are broken and “beyond fixing', you need damage in order to produce something profound and worth the 30 second glance from someone on their phone. If you don’t have anything seriously bad happen to you, then your stories are worth nothing and if you have bad thing happen to you but don’t tell those stories, then all the trauma is worth nothing. We have been conditioned to think that who we are is determined by how the world perceives us and what we do with what we are given. I think that’s crap.
It shouldn't matter how much we do or how much has happened to us in order to be deemed worthy enough of a shoulder to cry on or a moment of happiness. Each of us have our own unique stories that are comprised of hundreds of moments and details that we’ve probably forgotten, and for someone else to tell us what to do with those stories and those lost thoughts is sick. The beauty of vulnerability is the willingness of the person who is opening up. If we take away that choice and subconsciously force everyone who has a messed up story to tell it, then the message is poisoned and there is no conversation formed.
I have chosen to tell my stories because I want to and I’m good at it. I’m just tired of hearing people say that I have to, that it’s good I’ve decided to make something of all the bad. Isn’t it enough for me to have lived through the bad? To have just made it here anyways? Do I really need to produce something out of the bad in order for it to be meaningful?
I don’t think so.