For what is worth…

Ellie walked proudly and as she neared a group of people, all of who seemed to be somewhere about her age, she covered her face with a mystic smile, while giving a flirty wink and a cunning-like lift of the brow. As she sat down beside the people she addressed as friends, Ellie could deeply inhale the smoke in the air around her and she could spot cigarettes in her friends’ mouths. After taking a small sip from the vodka bottle handed over to her, she took out a cigarette of her own and pulled in the poisonous chemicals it contained inside her lungs. As she exhaled, dense clouds of smoke started coming out of her mouth and nose. Ellie was 16.

What’s the price young people have to pay nowadays in order to earn the super-high status in a high-school society? Ellie knew it wasn’t as complicated. Still, if you aim to get invited at the best parties, you have to do a little work. For starters, you change your outlook, and forget what cakes, sweets, fats and fast food looked and tasted like. You waste a whole bunch of your parents’ money on branded clothes, make-up, hairdo, perfumes, shoes, heels… You lose interest in everyone else’s interests, you grow your head too big and suck up to the queen-bee. The great struggle of strengthening your identity causes you to lose what little of it you possessed in the first place. But who cares, as long as it’s for the sake of partying. Grades, future and your own well-being are second-class things, family relations become almost no existent. Alienation’s in store for the parents, except when in need of money. And what exactly is to be paid with those money? Well, all the things that will cause people to keep inviting you to their parties, including alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, as you ruthlessly stick out the middle finger to all the warnings, pretending that the consequences won’t get to you…believing that all the enjoyment makes you unbeatable. Self-assured that mommy and daddy will take care of everything, hoping that all you’ll ever have to do it take large sips of the infinite stream of money, providing yourself with more make-up to hide the insecurity in your eyes. Loathing anyone who dares to raise his voice and claim he’s different, simply because you’ll never have the guts to do such a thing on your own. Mocking all the nerds, because unlike you they haven’t failed to select a fight-worthy goal in their lives, caring about their future, supporting and developing their intellectual skills (you know, the ones you yourself chose not to take an advantage of). Screaming that you’re daddy’s little girl no more in lack of the proof. Consciously misinterpreting the saying “that every day should be lived as if it was your last”. Striving to provoke envy in the hearts of others by playing the part of an unbreakable diva, while having nightmares if the truth beneath the surface somehow ends up exposed. Successfully erasing your personality, reproving your body to a point where it becomes unrecognizable, losing concern of what once used to be your main priority. Ensuring yourself with intangibility by satisfying the thirst for causing others misery. Intentionally attempting to grow up faster by doing things you’re mentally not really ready to do yet, which leads to acts of immorality. Refusing to realize that despite your perfect outer look, you shall always remain a scared little child in the chambers of your subconscious. But then again, you’re too young to worry right?
Twenty years later Ellie’s sitting on the floor in the corner of her gray-walled room. There’s emptiness filling her eyes and loneliness inside her heart. A single tear falls down her cheek and biting her lips she throws a piece of paper on a fair distance from her. And uncontrollable weeping follows, just as she realizes the things to come. Ellie has just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Isidora Bojkovska