Exhausting Teen Complexions

Teens today have a reputation for being more fragile, less resilient and more overwhelmed than their parents were when they were growing up.  Sometimes they’re called spoiled or coddled or helicoptered.

Being a teenager today is a draining full-time job that includes doing schoolwork, managing a social-media identity and fretting about career, climate change, sexism, racism and so much more. It’s exhausting!!!

It isn’t the thought of future that scares us, but the thought of controlling it. Teen minds have always craved stimulation, and their emotional reactions are by nature urgent and sometimes debilitating.

Here’s a short work that expresses a teen with social anxiety-

I wish I could unsee the cruel world.

Socialization was used to be my prime,

Used to do it all the damn time

But today when I look at this cynical society,
My heart feels up with anxiety
‘cause I see humans but no humanity!

I guess
This is the reason, why I sometimes feel
It’s easier to slip into my own dark abyss
Then to realize humanity’s remiss!

At times, I do sit down and wonder,
Am I really reserved?!
Or it’s just a cause of the coldness around...
Am I too fluent in silence?
Or are my words too overbalanced?!