***Disclaimer: I wrote this when I felt in a bad way about my life and my place in the world, I may not feel as self-depreciating now, but I still think that there is a lot of truth here, not just for me but for anyone in a similar situation.***
You know after a while even the most heart-felt, earnest advice becomes a lecture. After about five times of hearing how bad you've messed up, how you're throwing your life away, how your family only wants you to have a better life, you stop listening. Past a certain point you just give up on trying to explain or stand up for yourself and you put up a shield to keep the waves of negativity off your increasingly fragile psyche. Not all the feedback is negative, no, but every single bit of it tinged with the bitter taste of disappointment. No matter how hard you try to find the silver linings or how grown up you try to rally yourself into being everyone keeps giving you the "I wish you'd done it better" look.
Now is a sensitive time in your life. You're trying to find yourself, trying to make your way, trying to become a full-fledged adult. But at 19 you're in the teen-adult limbo where you're only considered an adult when it's convenient or you've done something childish. If you don't have a job everything you're told ends in "get a job;" if you're not in school everything is"go back to school." God forbid you're neither in school nor have a job, at that point everyone sees you as a waste of flesh and form. Everything you're met with has the crush of finality to it and you can't see through the haze of disappointment to find the silver linings. Sometimes it all seems too much and you need the absolute finality of death staring you in the face before you can really get yourself back together and try to press on. You're only a loser when you let yourself be; cowardice is never the answer. They say it's always darkest before the dawn and you're standing in the twilight.
