Under pressure

Junior year is commonly the hardest year for high school students. It's when the race for college truly picks up. You've got your PSAT, SAT, ACT, National Honor Society, college visits, and scholarship opportunities to start worrying about. You've got your sports, clubs, and grades to worry about. You've got your job, family, and friends to worry about. It's really loaded on this year, and it's almost impossible to find a balance, especially when you weigh in the acts of god and the unavoidable, like car accidents or sickness or losing friends.

It's hard to find space just to breathe.

The other day my dad handed me my National Honor Society application and I almost started crying. I was already knee-deep in AP homework and cleaning the house and getting ready for school the next. Another application, another day, but it managed to worm into the places where I shove the crap I don't know how to deal with, that fear of never amounting to anything, of being a disappointment--- not good enough not good enough not good enough---but I shoved it back into its place before it could well up and get the best of me, cause me to lose everything that I had barely been keeping together. I didn't cry. I didn't kick and scream, even though I desperately wanted to. No doors were slammed, no feet pounded out the door in frustration and humiliation.

Because we're all under pressure right now. My problems are no more important than anyone else's. I don't have any right to stomp out when things get tough, when I feel like I'm fishtailing out of the fucking road. I guess I'm growing up; I guess I'm learning my place. But these things I'm doing right now are important. No one else is responsible for your own failures---but they're also not responsible for your successes. And that's hard to remember, especially when you're young, when you're inexperienced, when you're so damn scared because each step you're taking feels like one more to a cliff.

It is so much easier to blame others when you're under pressure. When people are just there. Growing up means taking credit for your choices, good and bad. When you start to do that, you get a little stronger--and the pressure is a little easier to bear. It makes it easier to lift up instead of feeling like you're just squeezing through.

You've seen what happens in nature when things are under pressure. Some are flattened and destroyed, but the most valuable things can come out over time and pressure---diamonds and oil. If that's not a lesson from mother nature, I don't know what is.

We're being pressed down so tight right now. It takes a lot of grit and gumption to get through. Sometimes you're going to have to take things with your very teeth if you want it.

I want it.