I feel as though I am still young. I still have childish problems. I still need help from my parents more often than I would like to admit. Although I like to pretend I am always the responsible one, deep down there is still a rambunctious child inside of me who occasionally likes to make an appearance. 

But for some reason, as a sixteen-year-old, I am already expected to know my future. Even though I receive a mixture of responses when I tell people I don’t know what I want yet—one of them being, “That’s alright, you still have time”—the main one is them awkwardly nodding their head while I scramble for an answer.   

I assumed that the questions would start later on—maybe not even until senior year. I ached for more time alone with my thoughts and feelings before I had to know who I wanted to be. I needed a few more months, but real life doesn’t account for curious people. 

You know the questions I speak of because if you haven’t gotten asked them yourself, then you have been the one asking them. Where do you want to go to college? I don’t know. What do you want to major in? I don’t know. What kind of professions are you interested in? I don’t know. Who are you? I don’t know. 

When people ask these daunting questions, their intentions are pure. They simply want intel about your life, or they are trying to connect with you in a way everyone understands. Little do they know that internally, I am screaming. 

I scream because I do not know my future. I scream because I don’t want to be expected to know my future at sixteen. 

I feel as though I am simply a robot whose wires are fried from doing the same thing over and over with no real purpose except that’s how I am programmed.

I have been working incredibly hard for an extremely long time in order to reach a hypothetical goal that I always figured I would know later on in life. But now, later has arrived; the questioning came earlier than expected. I feel as though I am a fugitive sitting in court convicted for not being better prepared. 

Sometimes, when I really focus, I think about different paths I could take. I have potential options in my head, but none of them are thoroughly researched enough to be viable yet. I have hobbies and interests, but nothing I confidently know I want to pursue. I know what kind of person I want to be, but I am unsure if I am taking the proper steps to become her. I am confused. That is the only emotion I am sure of when discussing this topic. 

And as much as I would adore having answers to these ominous questions, what I really want is to stop being the robot that is fried, the fugitive that is cracking under pressure, the confused young adult with a brain that screams at her to do better, and rather just be the child who had “to be determined” dreams.