Sad Life

A pair of sad eyes walked along a familiar road. It was late at night, around twelvish or so, but as it was summer the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. A cool breeze made the stroll even more enjoyable and as the wind blew through the trees one could feel that mother nature was alive and well within the suburban scene in which the stroll was taking place. The beautiful sound of French singing filled the ears attached to the face upon which the eyes sat and helped immensely to set the mood for a long night of contemplation and it’s eternal sidekick; regret.
*Bing!*
A sound of a message received forced its way through the French woman’s voice and into the ears belonging to the sad pair of eyes. The eyes reached into their pocket and pulled out the smartphone buried within their athletic shorts which ironically had hardly ever been used for anything that could be considered “athletic.” As the eyes held up the phone they gazed at the lock screen upon which there could be seen a message from a contact labeled,
“Leia McEve.”
Though it is fairly obvious what a “Mom” is, the dictionary definition of a “Mother” is simply put, “a female parent.” And while this might seem like it just came out of nowhere, the name “Leia Mceve” just happened to belong to the pair of eyes’ mother. So it was safe to assume that the message which the eyes had just recently received had come from their mother.
They continued staring at the lock screen of the smartphone in their hand, seemingly annoyed at having being interrupted during their pleasant walk, until they eventually placed their thumb on the “home” button and…
“Try again.”
A small text at the bottom of the screen had popped up indicating that the so-called “Smartphone” had been unable to read the eyes’ fingerprint. Even more annoyed, they placed their thumb on the screen once again and…
“Try again.”
Anger is a feeling which many people experience for many different reasons. Maybe you were laid off, perhaps you spent forever preparing the batter for a cake just to have it burn because you weren’t paying attention, or it could be that someone around you, be it close or not, just won’t stop singing that new popular song even though you’ve told them a thousand times to shut up or pipe down. Whatever it is we all know the feeling. And as is the case with a couple of the previous examples, many times anger is simply caused by super minor things adding up until…
“GOSH DANG THIS PIECE OF CRAAAP!!”
The eyes nearly threw the smartphone down on to the ground in a fit of anger…
Scratch that, rage.
Now judging by word choice, you’d think it’d be safe to assume this particular pair of eyes belong to a middle school to junior high student. Not exactly cussing… but still enough to make your grandparents flinch a little. But in this particular case, you’d be wrong. The eyes sat within a nineteen-year-old boy who was just a couple months away from starting college… or maybe just being some bum who didn’t want to go to college but still had no idea what to do with himself.
After taking a breath or two the boy slowly proceeded to type a password into the keypad which had popped up after trying to use the fingerprint scanner one too many times.
“0531”
A sound password. One that would fool anyone… who didn’t happen to know his birthday.
The Boy, after finally getting into his phone was then greeted by the nagging screams of notification after notification. A battle of the mind starting to take place within the boy’s head. One which consisted of the urge to procedurally go through each and every app, clearing up all the little red circles that plagued his home screen, and the harrowing feeling one gets from knowing one’s mother is trying to get in touch with you. In a similar situation, a so-called “normal” person might just think, “Ohh, I can just look through all of these notifications later… right now I should just see what mom wants.”
But unfortunately the boy, he had struggled with feelings like this for many years, almost his whole life. Those nagging feelings that chain one’s mind up and force perfection on to every crevice of the mind. Those feelings that cloud the mind and serve as a constant reminder that YOU are a mess, YOU need to clean up your act, YOU are simply not good enough. Yes… in a world where freedom is emphasized more than goodwill towards others, feelings such as this keep one a prisoner in their own minds. Forceful urges to perfect everything about themselves and those around them upon them.
Though it probably doesn’t need to be said, the boy of course spent the next five or so minutes going through all of the apps over which a red circle with a variety of numbers had appeared. And finally, the boy arrived at the long-awaited messenger app. He opened the application, clicked into the chat labeled “Leia McEve” and finally beheld a short, two-sentence message which read,
“Are you okay? Are you feeling sad?”
A typical, “Hey how are you? Are you doing okay?” message. One that many parents, as well as children, are no doubt very familiar with. A message sent with the intent to check up on and judge the mental state of the receiving party, completely void of any sort of malice.
Tears hit the ground. The figure, who up to this point has been described only as “a boy with sad eyes,” fell to the sidewalk with tears flowing out of those aforementioned “sad eyes.”
Pain comes in many different styles. Whether it be through words, thoughts, feelings, or be it simply physical, pain, like anger, is a feeling that no one is a virgin too. Often pain just leaps on to a person, and other times it keeps piling on overtime, pulling a person down further and further linking up with anger, sadness, jealousy, etc. amplifying itself over and over until finally…
*SNAP!*
You break. All of that pain becomes too much for you to deal with and you end up doing something that you or, in the event that you aren’t able, your loved ones will regret. In short, pain is a powerful thing that, under the right circumstances, leaves scars.
Now as for why this particular message was enough to bring tears to this particular set of eyes… That is a rather complicated matter. One which would take much to long to explain in a single chapter, but to put it simply, it is hard to escape the truth when it consistently thrust upon them again and again. To simplify even further, if you happened to be a person with purple hair, and one-day society started saying that people with purple hair are always angry, would you not start to get angry when people all around you started to greet you with “Hey calm down buddy… I’ll just be on my way…”? You would, and eventually, some of you might start to dye your hair a different color. But those of you who find yourselves to be rather stubborn and refused to dye your hair would end up becoming angry at the world for labeling them that way. In the same way, a person who is labeled as “sad” would end up being sad over the fact that they are being labeled as such.
This boy, who has been labeled as the boy with “sad eyes” from the very start, had resigned himself to the fact that no matter where he was or whom he was with he would be seen simply as “a sad person.” And that is enough to make anyone shed a tear or two.
After a while, the boy got to his feet and looked up at the sky. It was a partly cloudy night but the stars were still visible through the many holes and cracks within them. While his eyes were pointed towards the sky the boy’s mind was elsewhere. He was conflicted by the many emotions swirling around inside trying to sort themselves out. “Who am I supposed to be?” “What am I supposed to do?” “Why was I even born?” Were                                         a few of the many questions the boy had been busy contemplating since he had started to be able to comprehend what it means to be alive. But now he didn’t feel like he even understood that anymore. When one doubts oneself everything goes up into the air and you forget who you even are.
The boy, unable to find the answers after staring into the night sky for what felt like an eternity, moved one foot after another once again and resumed his midnight stroll, though at this point he doubted that it was even midnight anymore.
Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight.
As a child, the boy had felt like life was as simple as he wanted it to be. But looking back now, even the fun times he had had as a kid seemed much more complicated than he had previously realized.
Eight plus eight is sixteen. Sixteen plus sixteen is thirty-two.
He had been told that senior year would be the most relaxing year. That he would just have to finish his classes, fill out some paperwork and kablam! Go to college, and after three or four years of that, your whole life starts. But somewhere along the way, things got twisted. Whether it had been him changing schools or possibly just him having a change of mindsets, the day senior year started he had been tossed a question that he felt he could not possibly answer.
“What do you want to do with your life?”
Thirty-two plus thirty-two is sixty-four. Sixty-four plus sixty-four is one hundred and twenty-four.
Though the boy had been asked this question a thousand times he had never truly thought about it as a choice. Go to college. Make money. That had been his answer to this particular question in the past but now that he actually thought about it was that truly what he wanted to do? What did he want to go to college for? What courses would he take in college that would possibly help him to live a life that he felt was quote on quote… “Successful.”
One hundred and twenty-four plus one hundred and twenty-four is two hundred and forty-eight. Two hundred and forty-eight plus two hundred and forty-eight is four hundred and ninety-six.
Values differ from person to person. Many people find that making a ton of money makes them successful. Some people find that raising a “happy family” makes them successful. Others say that being happy themselves is enough to be considered successful. The list goes on, but for this particular boy being successful was about being unique. “Being unique” in a sense can be seen as being your own person. In the eyes of the boy being unique was all about being creative. As long as he was being himself and was filling his life with creativity he would feel as if he had achieved all there was to achieve. So if that was what he considered being successful then how would he go about achieving success?
Yet another question that seemed impossible to answer.
Four hundred and ninety-six plus four hundred and ninety-six is nine hundred and ninety-two. Nine hundred and ninety-two plus nine hundred and ninety-two is one thousand nine hundred eighty-four.
In life, as one question is answered another one pops up. So where do the questions stop? Even on a test, once you’ve finished filling it out you have to ask, “So when will you have them graded?” or if the test was automated then you have to ask yourself, “What did I get?” And still, after you learn how you did you have to wonder how everyone will react. For some people, the questions stop when you stop caring about the answers. For others, they simply don’t.
As a kid, this isn’t much of a problem as you either, as stated before, don’t care about the answers or there just aren’t that many questions. At worst you have to answer what you want for dinner and what you wanna watch on TV. The problem occurs when you prepare to enter the so-called “real world.” The number of questions you start receiving starts to stack up exponentially.
One thousand nine hundred eighty-four plus one thousand nine hundred eighty-four is three thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight. Three thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight plus three thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight is seven thousand nine hundred and thirty-six.
Things never work out the way you plan. Sometimes it's just a super minor deviation like the person you were meeting’s watch is five minutes fast. And sometimes they just don’t show up altogether. Either way, the plan you had set in place was altered and so because of this, people oftentimes just throw the details to the wind. Seeing as a plan is always ever-changing most people tend to just emphasize the important parts and to let the rest play out the way it wants. For instance, would it not be better to say, “I would like to go to college someday,” and leave the rest up to fate? Sure you might emphasize which college or what you’d like to study but the important thing is that you’ve set out a manageable goal for yourself that you are more likely to follow than if you were to spell out every detail of your life just to have the plan fail ten seconds later.
In the case of the boy in question had set out a rather reasonable goal for himself and had stuck with it for the last ten or so years. But all of a sudden it had fallen apart when he learned that his desired career plan was not one he enjoyed or found to be something that would help him to feel successful.
Seven thousand nine hundred and thirty-six plus seven thousand nine hundred and thirty-six is fifteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. Fifteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-two plus fifteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-two is thirty-one thousand seven hundred and forty-four.
So the question is if you can’t plan to avoid all the questions that come with growing up then what can you do? The boy had attended a certain class during highschool which pertained to the history of Europe. If the boy learned anything from this particular class it was that ignorance is bliss. In layman's words, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.
Never the less the boy continued down the sidewalk contemplating the answers to the many questions that had just recently come knocking at his door. If he wanted to live a life at the end of which he would feel as if he had been a success then he could not simply live in ignorance. “How will I make money?” “Where do I want to work?” “What people should I meet?” Questions like these and many more flooded the mind of the boy and with that, he continued down a road filled with contemplation and without a doubt… regret.