The year was 2004, and my life felt like every teenage movie out there; surrounded by Mean Girls, while being in love with The Girl Next Door, and even after my 50 First Dates I couldn’t get my first kiss. They had told me once that life was just a Simple Plan.

Growing up in the early stages of the internet while truly beginning your own life was an interesting scenario. The tool we’d use to escape and express ourselves was in the same developing stage as we were, as teenagers. This led us to gravitate towards music, books, and movies from pop culture, where we could see others living through the same struggles as we were in those difficult years.  

Being an outcast at school and living in the shadow of my older brother, meant I’d often walk along on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams with my headphones plugged into my Walkman. Instead of taking notes in class, my notebook would be filled with doodles and promises to my future self to not be an American Idiot like every adult who told me what to do.

I just wanted to scream “I’M JUST A KID” to everyone, since I was simply looking for a Happy Ending to my story, but I realized it was too early for that. The only thing I could really say was Welcome to My Life as I’d walk to the back of the line at the cafeteria, hoping not to get picked on by the jocks.

These early teenage years led me down a creative rabbit hole, spending the majority of my weekends watching movies on VHS and listening to punk rock in my room screaming “F**CK THE WORLD”. I would imagine myself being in all these movies and how different my life could be, if that were my story. 

Here I am now 15 years later, still writing and still dreaming. The confused kid that was once looking for a way out, is now writing new pages of his life every day and is starting to understand a little more what this life thing is all about. I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I have progressed in the last couple of years, giving me hope that there could be a meaning behind all this.

I was fortunate enough to relive some these memories this past weekend with some of my closest and newest friends, people I never thought I’d be friends with before, since it took me while to understand what friends rally were. This showed me that no matter where you come from or what you’ve been through, we all try to find our place in this world at some point in time.

Trust me life is great, we all go through confusing stages in life where we feel out of place, just remember those are all rough patches. Nobody has their lives figured out during their early teen-age years, which is the entire purpose of that period of your life; Figure out how the world around you works whilst finding your own spot in this mess we call life. So yes, life was just a Simple Plan, just not one you understand right away and that’s normal. Welcome to our lives.