For We Are Young And Beautiful

• Oscar Sweet, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2021

The sun leaves, and I’m back doing it again. Every night, alone, watching YouTube, studying, Netflix. Again, again, again. Studying. It’s been three years, and I’m still doing it. School, home, studying, YouTube, Netflix, binge, binge, binge. Entertain, entertain, entertain, sleep, School, home - repeat. Is this all life is?

All these things I watch, again, again, always different but always the same. They all show what I should be doing. Parties, drugs, excitement, risks, close-close-close friendships, endless extravagant risk-taking and living, and spending time with people, friends, loved ones, dates.

Am I broken somehow? I don’t do that. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’ve been doing this for so long. My parents are there, and they do a good job at raising me and my sister. But where I should be partying, and kissing everyone I can get my hands on, boy or girl, I’m instead watching through a screen of a thousand million flashing lights, peering like some gremlin into another reality. One I can barely fathom.

Of course, I like watching it, and I imagine what it would be like. I see all the beautiful people doing all the beautiful things, and it is, of course, beautiful.

I could ignore it all, if it weren’t for the fact that everyone around me seems to be doing the same thing. Drugs, sex, music, concerts, risks, excitement. For we are young and beautiful, when better to do it all?

Suddenly, I’m sitting in an enormous room, desks everywhere, head bent over a thick wad of paper, asking me questions that I can easily answer. The paper is bright, bright white, the desk even more sterile white. I can hear pens scratching, and sighs all around. The clock seems to glide through the hours.

Is this life? Time flying past, being challenged by, and meeting the challenges of increasingly more intricate inanities?

I finish the exams. And I return home. I have nothing more to study for. I remember the main reason I watched so much YouTube and Netflix, and all the rest of the endlessly entertaining non-entertainment was to procrastinate studying. And suddenly I can do the things I like, paint, and draw, and walk through the bush. I don’t have to worry as much about the next assignment, the next test. That’s all going to be happening again soon, but I don’t have to deal with it for months.

I can push it away with other things, just like the entertaining non-entertainment taught me.

I spend more time with my friends. I begin to think maybe I am normal, maybe that was all just a blip, just some bad brain chemistry. I’ll be better, spend more time being young.

And now I am back in the room, with the desk and laptop and phone. With YouTube and the rich, beautiful people showing me what I should be as I put off the studying that I know I will eventually do.

But just one more video.