High school sucked for me. Before college, I had no friends. My days consisted of going to school, talking to almost nobody, and coming home to do almost nothing before bed.
In the midst of all this nothing, I had time to think up a glamorized chain of events that I genuinely believed would happen when I left high school. I’d lose a bunch of weight, get a group of close friends to go out with me on the weekends and then the next morning we’d all wake up and get coffee or something and discuss how stupid we were, but still do the exact same thing again next weekend.
This idea that things would get better eventually is what kept me going. I would always imagine that college and the rest of my life would play out like this, and I’d end up as a very fit, healthy and socially experienced grandfather to a group of loving grandchildren. I’d imagine myself sneaking my grandkids cookies when their parents weren’t looking and leaving them with tidbits of my life lessons at the same time, saying something like, “being blackout drunk is scary but how else are you going to learn your tolerance levels without having a messy night in your friend’s bathroom,” as I pass little Kyle Jr. a cookie.
When they got older and I was reaching my end as a loving grandfather, I’d show them all my thrown together pictures of me and my friends that I over edited on Photoshop and tell them to keep hold of the memories for grandpappy. They’d be humbled and honored, and if I was lucky, maybe even a little jealous of how cool my life was.
Surprisingly, most of my pre-college dreams came to fruition. I lost a lot of weight, have a group of good friends and a stable relationship — I even got 27 likes on my Facebook profile picture, which is a huge step above the one like I got on my high school profile picture I kept from sophomore to senior year.
Yet, I still find myself up at 1 a.m. on a weeknight waiting for a video, of a woman curling her hair with hot dogs, to load. I’ll lie in bed and think about how badly I’m messing things up by pushing off my deadlines out of an intense fear of failure, then watch Tasty videos to soothe those fears, and do the same thing the next day.
And to be completely honest, telling my grandchildren that one of my integral college growth experiences was facing some of my darkest thoughts every night with a backdrop of Facebook viral videos isn’t that much fun, and doesn’t paint a picture of a socially thriving grandfather.
So, what am I supposed to do to achieve this vision of a socially, mentally and physically perfect grandfather I’ve thought up? I’ve recently come to the conclusion that there is nothing I can do. This grandpa doesn’t exist.
For one thing, no grandfather should give their pre-adolescent grandchildren advice about drinking while sneaking them a cookie, or push their selfish needs to be socially validated on them by “gifting” them their low-quality pictures.
Just living life is anxiety-provoking, and there will never be a time that I will be fully satisfied with myself and what I deliver into the world. Instead of reading in between the lines of viral Facebook videos for reassurance, or dreaming of a god-like grandparent version of myself, I should focus on the now.
Kyle Olsen is a junior journalism major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, you can contact him at kbolsen@umass.edu.
