Jack Kerouac once said that a writer had to live in trenches and experience all the broken places of the world. No one who lives in a high-rise penthouse far above the masses could write a dialogue that could inspire a generation into movement or spark a rebellion in a group of people that have lost all hope.
I wholeheartedly believe him to be right.
You have to experience loss. Pain and sadness get thrown at you like the curveball meant to win the game. You're told to get over it, to pick up the pieces of your shattered soul and lock them away in the tiny box at the back of your mind. Humans are expected to not be affected and if you are, you're weak. Especially teenagers. Teenagers are told to grow up and to start acting like grown-ups almost as they are told to sit down and shut up because the adults are talking.
You're physically weak at the beginning and end of your life, but it's during your teenage years when you are the most emotionally vulnerable. Every move you make, every word you say is scrutinized and put out on the internet for the world to see. You have to have social media to post those things or you're a loser. You have to say ignorant garbage that you don't necessarily believe because if you don't, you're an ass. Every little thing that you do has to be a goddamn production because the young live in a glass house with a large supply of free stones sitting right outside.
The toll all of that takes on the mind is an enormous one. Hurt doesn't go away, words leave scars like brands that we've burned into our own skin, and actions that don't seem meaningful are tattooed on our hearts so they'll never be forgotten. Our futures, the ones that most of us haven't lived yet and something that a few of us didn't live to see, will be spent trying to scrape those tattoos off our hearts or cutting through the words, burned like brands, with a knife that so many will freely hand to us.
There will always be people out there, bound and determined to make you bleed either ink or blood and there will always be things set in front of you like an obstacle course to make you fail. Those are the things that can make a life or break a soul and you won't know which category you belong to until good things start happening or you're dead.
The world is a broken place full of dead places like the one's Kerouac was talking about. If you live in a fantasy world, you won't experience the lows or the highs. Life is filled with happy moments, sad moments, angry moments and loving ones. Beautiful things are born from the broken places.
Live life, fall in love, get a broken heart, go get that tattoo, try a cigarette, live through loss, give second chances but don't be foolish. Get married, have a kid or two or five, go do something with your life that makes you happy. It doesn't have to be something meaningful to the world, or a grand gesture, but it does have to mean something to you. So go live your life, after all you only have one. And make sure you treasure the special little moments because you made it this far and you deserve to.
This may sound pretentious, but don't take it that way. I've lived in the broken places for a good portion of my life. I know how they work. Everyone will have them embedded somewhere is the recesses of your experiences, but there is really only a sad number of people who ever take something away from them. Someone taught me this lesson after a couple of years of watching him grow and now, I want everyone to take something from this.
Live a life that you won't regret having.
-Erin