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I really wonder about my generation sometimes.

I hate parties. Let me make that stipulation before I may proceed. They really just make me tired, and by the time I have enough personal space to look around, everyone in proximity is being insanely inappropriate, and then I gag a bit.

So that's my deal.

It surprises no one when I say that I don't like big parties. No one with an ounce of intuition, anyways.

And yes, I completely understand that I can't find the person I want to be lazy with, a beau, without putting myself out in the world to find them first. My confidence problems, which don't manifest themselves in the way that most girls' my age, but in a quieter and more withdrawn way, don't help me any. I'm the biggest mess, and most people would never guess that.

But, really. My generation. Our need for instant gratification and our culture of "hit and run" socialization...are these results of short attention spans, overstimulation of dopaminergic receptors, or an upbringing in a world full of too many choices and not enough security? We seek what we can surely grasp, fleeting as that grasp may be. It worries me, this apparent piece of our souls that is missing. I guess my own desires color my outlook, but doesn't it sort of...suck? To live this life of getting what you can, because genuity is clearly too much to ask? I don't think that it is too much to ask. I think it is just enough. But, oh, our cultural pressure! What are we supposed to expect from ourselves when, often, the world expects everything and nothing from us? It's a quandary that is hard to grasp and harder to conquer. It's a matter of courage, I believe, to have the courage to closely examine your life and decide what you ACTUALLY want, not what you think you should want. As we bypass truth in the race to satisfaction, we also let ourselves fall to the wayside, in a combination of things too complex yet too fleeting. We want to feel as if we belong, above all things; we want to feel warm touch and deep concern and a blanket of constancy. This is normal, but the way we go about it, with desperation but a short lived need, produces this culture we see now. It is a culture that lacks any privacy in intimacy and any need to respect oneself enough to give that privacy. We have a culture of blurred morality, or perhaps, morality has been quietly redefined into a whole 'nother monster.

I don't have the answers, the explanation. All I can say is that...I don't like it. I just don't like it, and I insist on being myself, and if that means a slower curve of "socialization", then that's that.