Living for a fantasy

      The best part about blogging, for me at least, is that every time I write a post or a story or a poem, I can dream of the day when everyone knows about it and talks about how they love it and how it made their lives better. I don’t know if it’ll happen, there’s every likelihood it won’t, but when I imagine it, it makes me feel like my opinion is worth something, like even if no one hears me, my words still matter. 

    I know that everyone is different but one thing that I think all of us have in common is the dream of being important, the dream of mattering to somebody, somewhere. Why else would so many teenagers dream of becoming YouTube stars? We may have it easier than our ancestors in almost every way, but so many of us struggle with feeling like nobody cares about us. 

    I’m single, live with my mother, and have never had a job. I’m the textbook definition of failure in the United States. And yet I’m luckier than just about everyone else because I have the ability to live out, in some small way, my fantasies. That feels wrong to me. Shouldn’t I be able to look at people who have jobs, friends, and hobbies and think “God I wish I were them”? But I don’t. I don’t because all you need to do is spend five seconds online to see how miserable things are for them. I may not have a good life, but I chose to be who I am today, and I can’t help but look at normal people and see people who didn’t really get a say in who they are as a person. I know that’s just a thing we need to deal with, but not everyone needs to deal with it, and those who do have to deal with it often aren’t even allowed to complain. 

    I know you can’t give people everything they want, but I don’t think most people want much. They just want lives that help them stay happy and fulfilled. My view is that what it comes down to is that society builds boxes for people to occupy, but these boxes aren’t built around what people really want to do. They tend to leave things out. Most people accept that, because they have enough to survive, and they get by pretending to be somebody else. But what if there isn’t a box you can occupy? What if you look at society and think “I just don’t want this”? Is it really necessary to sacrifice who we are to keep everyone else happy?