"Only the young can" but we simply can't

What a wonderful thing to be able to age like Benjamin Button! I think youth is a particularly terrible thing. You're so confused because you're still just trying to figure out how the world works and all this influx of information just bombards your brain and it overwhelms more than it helps you out. You don't know who you are, you don't know where you want to go and you don't know how to get anywhere. Not everyone is like this though, some people seem to have this fixed view set in front of their eyes and they run at it with such great determination. But I think most of us are confused. There are thousands of puzzle pieces to put together and over half of them don't even belong in the same picture.

Then there's the pressure that old coots put on you by saying nostalgic things like how great it was to be young and passionate. Well I am passionate but for absolutely nothing and it's frustrating! Because it feels like all this passion and time and energy is wasted on a fickle idiot like me, why can't it be on someone else for a minute while I go and figure stuff out? Not everyone has the luxury to just take a breather, I get that, trust me, I get it. And I get how like a spoiled brat I sound when I start saying things like these but I feel like I'm treading water all the time. And through it all everyone is judging me for not figuring out how to walk on water.

If only we had all this youth when we're a little older and knew what's worth fighting for. If only we received it a little later in life when the path has been cleared a little so no time or energy would have been spent on trying to bat the bushes and thorns aside. Why does it feel like an anvil of responsibility has so suddenly fallen on my back and I don't end up embracing it like everybody else but revert to the child I've always been inside? What matters anymore? Why do conflicting ideals and needs keep popping out of the blue like we're all supposed to be prepared to make calculated decisions on every single one of those conflicts.

I don't get those stories of kids who graduate uni with a magna cum laude at the age of 14. Why would you so willingly leave your childhood and enter this new realm that's so cold and empty and there is no more joy in watching butterflies float along the gentle autumn wind? When there is constant pressure for you to make decisions, good decisions that won't screw up your life and all else who would be affected, in a heartbeat? When you long so deeply to be accepted by people around you but can't seem to even accept who you are or who you're becoming yourself? When it feels like you're treading water in a sea of judgmental eyes who assume "you should have known better"?

I finished reading Fahrenheit 451 because I couldn't put it down save from the times I'm in class or sleeping. It's funny and sad how it feels like the people you would want to much to converse with and actually befriend are trapped within the confines of the pages of your favourite books and the scenes of your favourite films. I don't think I could talk to anyone in my life so openly like I desperately tried to with the likes of Clarisse and Uncle and Beatty. But what need do I have to be heard when I have even nothing to say?