FML. Life is ridiculous. My life is ridiculous. That is so conceited of me to say, because my life is not the only unreasonably hollow life in the category of American teenagers. And you know what world: it is not my fault. Well, I guess it is partially my fault for feeding into the frenzy of pressures and unrealistic expectations I am surrounded by on a daily basis. I want to be a screenplay writer. It is a pretty lofty goal as far as a middle-class-no-connections-city-girl go. Oh, I an do it if I got into an elite high school that shoots out rocket scientists every year like clockwork. Then I begin to go through the logistics of the situation: once I get out of said school, I will have to get into this pretty popular, but not too widely known ring of colleges called the Ivy Leagues and right for this little newspaper called the Lampoon. And I will do all this so that after I graduate I can move out of my parents house and buy a crap shack apartment in Los Angeles, probably working as a waitress or maybe even a stripper, because I would not want to bring disappoint on my family by becoming a prostitute (I am so much classier than that.) Finally, when I am 28 years old and still a starving writer, my parents will beg me to come back to the Midwest and settle down a few towns over. Dear God, I am doomed to be a settler, and not even a pioneer; just a tired, dream-dead settler.

I am suddenly aware of the sharp stinging on my left shoulder. All of my head rambling is drowning out the throbbing the needle is causing to my skin. I secretly smile at how spontaneous this action is. My whole life is planned out down to the high school credit; and yet this mark is unplanned and so permanent in a way that a 4.0 GPA will never be. FML. Forget My Life. I just got a tattoo. It is the Chinese character smile. =)