Caiti's Crossing

We all loved Avril Lavigne at some point, a long time ago, even for a split second, even if you loved to hate her and how her high pitched voice was SO high pitched that it sounded brilliant and flawless.

But doesn’t she have a point?

Doesn’t everything just seem so fucking complicated sometimes?

You go to the grocery store for milk and you think you can be quick, maybe catch a short line at the register, but the place is packed. You try the self-checkout but the dumbass in front of you broke the machine and all the other lines are crazy long. You’re frustrated or in a hurry and you seriously consider just sitting that milk jug on the floor and leaving.

Or you get off work and you’re tired and ready to go home but you need to stop for gas first. You dread it because you feel so tired and exhausted after the long day that just the thought of lifting the gas pump is exhausting. So you pull up to the gas pump and you either prepay inside the station or you pay at the pump, and then you try to untwist your gas cap AND YOU CAN’T because it was twisted too tightly last time. It’s so frustrating and you just want to scream.

Or maybe you drive a newer model vehicle and don’t even have a twisting gas cap.

If that’s the case, well screw you and your newer model car and non-twisty gas caps.

So I heard a lot of griping and complaining from my friends. Everyday shit that they just got tired of going through, things that were exhausting their brains and making them dread getting up in the mornings. I decided to compile the list and make a post about it so that if you happen to stumble upon it and identify with one of these things, you’d know for certain that you are definitely not alone in the pesky daily battles with life. A lot of these gripes come from college kids or recent college grads, which means that this is basically a list of first world problems college kids endure (we know there are worse things happening in other places but we can’t fix that now and we have problems of our own that we can fix; it is OH-KAY to have first world problems) so adjust your expectations accordingly.

TAXES. What are they? We were never taught this stuff! What THE FUCK is a W2? How do I know what it is? My parents always took a bunch of books and receipts to a smelly lady who would ‘take care of it’ for them for a $250 fee and that was all I ever knew about taxes. They remain a mystery.

Boys. Fuckboys? Real boys? Relationships with them? Why did he act interested in me, take me on two dates where he asked me to pay the check, then dump me after a month, and text me a week later asking why I hadn’t texted him?? What is this wild imagination of his conjuring up?

Eating healthy/being healthy in college. With a college lifestyle. And a college budget. We can’t afford $13 organic noodles uncooked. We CAN afford $1 ramen/cup-o-noodles or $5 Little Caesar’s pizza or $0.60 wings at Buffalo Wild Wings on a Thursday night. And we can DEFINITELY afford bottled water but isn’t that secretly killing us or something? Who cares. Everything’s bad for you apparently. But people are always questioning why college students are so reckless and unhealthy.

Let me clarify.

We are reckless because we HOPE you hit us with your car so you can pay our student loans or our tuition. We LOOK for wet floor signs in Walmart so that we can hurl our bodies toward the floor with the hopes of winning a lawsuit. We have DEBT and NO MONEY and NO FOOD. We have nothing to lose.

We are unhealthy ALSO because we have DEBT (which brings stress, sleepless nights, crying, and wrinkles), we have NO MONEY (we can’t buy decent food, we can’t pay off our debt, we can’t seem to get ahead because we still have to make time in our day for classes which makes it difficult to hold a full time 8 or 9 – 5 job, so we’re living on part-time pay with full time needs), and we have NO FOOD because we are spending our money on debt and bills and everything else and if we have something left over we have no choice but to purchase alcohol and Taco Bell because we have to be intoxicated if we want to remain even remotely sane until graduation.

Don’t get me started on healthcare. We (college students) want you to hit us with your car, but we don’t want you to kill us. We like living this way and we choose to keep re-committing but we have to hope and pray that we can stay alive until we can get our own healthcare.

Financial aid. I don’t really have to say anything else but I will.

NOT ONLY do you have to spend 7 hours filling out the FAFSA, but SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG and you’ll have to go to the financial aid office. But before you can actually get into the financial aid office, you will inevitably encounter a line LONGER THAN THE BERLIN WALL, consisting of EVERY STUDENT AT YOUR UNIVERSITY. You’ll wait in line for hours and finally make it to the desk where they’ll answer every question you have with, “Just wait 3-5 days.”

I’m pretty sure if I wait 3-5 days, I’ll have less money and less patience and EVERYTHING will still be really fucking complicated.