I’m a hypocrite. A fraud. I wear a mask but it’s starting to chip. I believe in “sticking it to the man” but I arrive on time to a job I hate. I loathe tobacco companies but I constantly crave cigarettes. I hate the idea of a nine to five boring life, yet I admire the average business man in suit and tie. I say I love to read, but I rarely open up my textbooks. I am a feminist but I do nothing for the cause. I give advice to my friends on their relationships, yet I don’t have the guts to tell that boy that I like him.

I get spurts of motivation that fade away too quickly. My ideas do not have time to escape from my pen. Losing a parent is probably the most painful thing to go through. Once you live through that, you become numb to everything else. I always say “how are you?” to a parent of my friend. Being respectful is the most important quality. I think a comfort level with a person depends if you can sit through silence together without it feeling awkward. The day I got my braces off, I felt like a woman. Saving money is a better feeling than spending it. I have an existential crisis about once a week. I love hugging more than kissing. Whenever I’m sad, I take a hot shower and watch the steam fill up the entire bathroom. I’ll be twenty one years old and I can proudly say I still sleep with a stuffed animal. It’s a yellow duck, named Mister Ducky and yes I know I’m extremely original. As I get older, all I can hope is that as my body ages, my mind still stays young.

Interesting is the least interesting word in the English language. Simple words are more powerful than complex ones. It is absolutely remarkable that everything we read is just a combination of twenty six letters. The brain named itself. Your head is your life. If you held someone’s brain, a persons preserved brain, you are holding their life. You are holding their memories, their fears, thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes, personalities, and qualities. And quite literally, you have touched, actually fucking touched, that person’s life. I want my life to be meaningful. I should take better care of myself. I should eat healthier. I should work out more. No one ever regretted a work out. I should read more. Read books that make me feel a part of that fictitious world. Read books that make me look at life differently. I should write more. I should work harder in school. I should drink more water. I should tell people I love them more. I should try not to bring my phone everywhere I go. I should meet new people and not be afraid to get to know them. Or to get that cute boy’s number. I should do all these things. I should. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day.

The idea of college not only bores me, but it makes me want to regurgitate my last meal. I think about dropping out of college at least once every time I step foot into the building. At 20 years old, I can honestly say I do not know what I want my full time career to be, especially since this career sticks with me until retirement. I can tell you the anatomy of the brain, but ask me what a hard-drive is and I’ll probably just shrug my shoulders. Everyone is a number in college. I’m a goddamn statistic. Sooner or later, my grains of sand at the top of my hour glass will slowly sprinkle down to the bottom, and all I’ll have to show for my time spent on this Earth is a fragile, thin piece of paper with my name and major on it, saying that I went to college to try to make a “decent” life for myself. Never settle for decency friends, always strive for success.

Life is a joke, and if you don’t laugh, you didn’t tell it right. I love stand-up comedy. George Carlin is basically my hero. I love poetry, even though I’m not too good at it. I love rollercoasters. I love adrenaline pumping things. I love spontaneity. I love the sound of a vinyl rather than the sound of my iPhone speakers. Drugs fascinate me, but I am afraid of dependency. There are days I find myself beautiful, there are days I find myself repulsive, but every day I look in the mirror, I see a fighter, and nothing is more attractive than that. I think sex gets too much hype. I think about how I look when I have sex; I can never fully enjoy it. As much as I wish that I was born into a shit-ton of money, I don’t really think I mean that. I would not know the value of a dollar. I would not know the feeling of struggle or working or being a contributing member of society. I suppose some would say, if money isn’t bringing you happiness, you’re probably not spending it right. But I don’t think that’s the answer to everything. I am certainly not poor, I do not take my house in Staten Island for granted, but I also have never experienced luxury spending. I have never went into a store without checking a price-tag. I always knew I could buy the blue shirt or the red shirt, but I cannot buy both. I never bought something without justifying the purchase. Hopefully from this, from working my ass off in college, I can say that every dollar I earn, was earned from myself, and I didn’t just have the money handed to me. I will never know the taste of a silver spoon but maybe some experiences are better never having to be experienced at all.

The certain experience that everyone will ultimately have is death. I will die one day and the universe will not know nor care of it. When someone dies, I do not say “until we meet again”. We probably won’t. Although I do not follow a religion, it is one of my favorite things to discuss. Whenever I question life, I remember that when you’re alive you can listen to music, and that’s something you can’t do while dead. A person’s dislikes says way more about their character than their likes. Tell me why you hate TV shows, not why you love movies. Tell me why you hate the taste of milk, not why you love the taste of chocolate. Tell me why you hate cocky people or sports or politics or racism. Fill my head with your passionate hatred. That is how you learn about a person, no matter their age.

When I think of my childhood, I see a big grey gap. Something is missing, maybe one day I’ll fill it. My friends are my family. My family is my happiness. I have all different types of friends. My friend Regina used to hate how tall she was, but you never hear much about short models now do you? My friend Peter loves technology and took my entire laptop apart and put it back together. He’s the next Steve Jobs that one. My friend Rikki wants to be on Broadway and she scoffs at those that tell her she’ll never make it. I hope one day she laughs in their faces as they wait at the back entrance to get her autograph on their playbill. Jack is the biggest procrastinator I know, yet she will stay up until 4:00AM contemplating whether or not she needs the semi-colon in her thesis statement. Anthony love boats and if he could be anyone it would be Jay Gatsby. Eugene needs a night worth forgetting. Christian is an asshole, but I still love him. Adam was the first one to see me when my father died. Without these few people, I do not know if I would still be standing here. I know it sounds cliché, but clichés are powerful truths. If a truth is a leaf, a cliché’ is the whole damn tree. I once climbed Mt. Vesuvius in Italy. I once rode a camel in Israel. I once drank an espresso in Austria. And only once have I felt heart-break. Every human being has gone through it. And it sucks. I liked him and he liked me and he was mysterious and funny and intelligent and affectionate and boom. He had a girlfriend. That lying son of a bitch had a girlfriend and I allowed him to treat me like I was less of a human being. Of all the bad and heartache that came out of him, there was still some good. And I do not regret the time and effort I put into it all, I just regret how vulnerable I was. The scariest thing, is for a little while, I thought I loved him, but I have forgotten to love myself first. That is a cliché that changed my life.

The cell-phone changed my life. I remember ten years ago having a house phone on the kitchen wall, where the cord only stretched a few steps, and now we have these weird little rectangles in our pockets that beep to remind us how to live our lives. Message here, notification there, this person liked this other person’s photo, reminder: paper due Wednesday, voice-mail from mom, your next period is in 5 days. I am attached to this. And I’m not the only one. We rather talk on our phones than talk in person and we rather know the weather forecast on the app than just go outside to see for ourselves. We depend, need, crave, technology. Some make fun of the Amish, but I get them now, I really do. They probably think we’re all idiots, and I’m not disagreeing with them. For the smartest species in the world, humans are really fucking stupid.

We are kind of cool though. We make buildings. We make art. We make language and fashion and music and food. We all made this world what it is. I wonder what I’ll contribute to it.