Earn

I love working. Really. I love having a job I love being busy and I love getting a direct deposit every two weeks. I love having a purpose and a routine to follow and feeling like a grownup.

I love writing. I love sitting in my room on my bed like I am now, and just writing without stopping for hours. I love it when the words in my head actually work on paper and I love watching someone read my writing and seeing them smile at the end. I love feeling like someone outside of the world I live in, and just observing and articulating, independent of my being or my place on Earth.

I love winning. I love winning big things that people will tell you aren't competitions, but so are. I love that I got into my top choice college. I beat my shitty college counselor who told me I wasn't a good enough writer to get in. I beat every teacher and adult in my life who smiled pitifully when I told them I was going to be a writer because here the fuck I am. Being a writer. I love the idea of leaving Baltimore and moving to my dream city.

I love a lot of things. I love my life, and my friends, and working, and writing, but man, I am fucking tired.

I am tired of not having enough money to go out with my friends and afford college. I am tired of writing bullshit essays to beg people to give me money so I can enjoy school without feeling that hollow pain in my stomach because I can't afford to eat. I am tired of hearing from adults and peers alike that I can't do it because to be perfectly honest I don't have much of a choice. I love winning and working because I have been conditioned to believe that those things are benchmarks for success and they are but they make m feel like a fucking loser, so, you know, what the hell? I know what I have to do bt right now I am in high school, writing a minimum of four essays a week, plus all of the competitions and scholarships to afford more school, and I feel like I am being asked to be a child, a teenager, and a forty-year-old women with her whole life figured out. I am tired of being a million different people who all suck.