It’s 12:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, and I’m speeding home on Stevens Creek Boulevard. The lights are all green, and as such the drive feels like an eternal cruise, the empty lanes waves that I surf home. During the day, there are lots of distractions: cars, people, and, in general, a lot of other visual and audible noise. At night, the little things on the road, like stop lights, headlights and the distant droning of sirens are all so mesmerizing. They all make up a beautiful daze—like the fog that appears on windows when you blow on them, while my car is like the finger that carves its own path.
A Kanye West song is playing in the background, with allusions to Lexapro and references to self-consciousness delivered in his infamous voice. The volume is all the way up, but the music still seems relatively quiet. The rolling bass contributes to the blur of the drive, but the sharp treble keeps me focused and alert.
My brain is able to relax. My conscious is fully devoted to maneuvering the roads, and the loudness of the music overcomes any other thoughts. For just these few minutes alone in my car, the pressure of the world is taken off of my shoulders. I don’t have to feel anything, and not feeling is such a relief, because most of my life is spent with my neurons firing in overdrive, trying to obtain the ever so elusive answers to questions that spin around my skull.
Who am I?
What is my purpose?
Am I really doing the best I can?
Is my contribution to the world a net positive?
Should I be doing something else?
What do I offer to society?
My line of questioning is never met with satisfactory answers. There is so much gray area in life, and so many things I don’t know how to answer in the first place. I spend lonely afternoons laying on the black bean bags in my room, staring at the clock but unable to get up or move, the feeling of longing in my chest.
Happiness is an illusion for me. Having answers to these questions is the criteria for my own happiness, and yet I cannot definitively answer a single one of them. And I completely understand this, but it is a poisonous train of thought that I keep reverting back to.
Sometimes I feel trapped. My brain is moving 100 miles an hour, and by the time I’ve completed one thought I end up even more confused than where I started. From one main stem of thinking sprouts many smaller stems and leaves. But the problem is, each one of these smaller ideas grows into a large one, and thus there is no finite limit to where my mind takes me. Alas I begin going from broader, purpose-esque questions to self doubt by blowing smaller things out of proportion.
What if I had taken the SAT more seriously?
Did my college applications live up to my full potential?
Should I have applied myself more in school the past few years?
On the days that I receive A’s on challenging Calculus tests, my thought process tries to justify what happened. Instead of just enjoying a good grade, I have to question whether this is what I am characterized by or not, whether this is what I want to be known for or not, whether this is something that makes my parents proud or not. And of course, the most important question, whether this is something that makes me happy or not.
For seniors like myself, college applications are in full swing, moving from the background to the forefront in the already jam packed schedules of Monta Vista students. Each school wants to know who we are, and what our values are. For me, advertising my identity to others is difficult, because I don’t even know what I want to pitch to others.
I’m sure many can relate to how I feel. There may not be answers to the questions that leave me utterly perplexed most of the time, and you may not find the answers that you seek, but at least there is reassurance in the fact that others feel the same way. I have come to learn that when it comes to mental health, you are never left alone. Contrary to popular belief, high school is not a time of getting good grades so you can get into Stanford, but rather is a place for kids to struggle and ultimately grow from their experiences, and ultimately learn more about who they are.
I think a lot of people feel guilty about being confused about their identities and their happiness, and I feel guilty sometimes too. Repeatedly, I tell myself that I am so blessed, that I am surrounded by everything that I could ever need in life, but I always have to remember that this struggle for identity and happiness is part of the human condition. It is shared across socioeconomic lines, across racial divides, across the world. Political elites and the poor alike are both searching for their meaning and their place in history.
Some days I crumble. I get behind the wheel of my car and go out on long drives in the dark, shutting myself down and running away from the answers I seek. There I am yet again, turning down Stevens Creek and using the temporary blur of the drive to self-medicate.
