Pretention.

When you wake up in the morning,

Hit the snooze button despite already oversleeping,

Surely your teachers and peers will eagerly await your sleepy-eyed demeanor,

When you’re among your friends,

Be loud,

Make obnoxious jokes and force yourself into a spectacle,

If no one’s staring then you’re not trying hard enough,

When they ask what you’re doing this weekend,

You tell them you’re going to the city because tall buildings pull your heart strings and this is the closest thing to romance that you have,

Go to a museum and make sure it’s not the Met,

Remember that it’s all about quality and not quantity,

The Met is a bit too overrated anyways,

Go to the MOMA and hold your hands behind your back,

Concentrate intently and pretend you understand the meaning behind a black dot centered on a white canvas,

Make small talk with gaudy strangers in fur coats so that you can feel on par with their social status,

Try to get invited to an exclusive showing of some obscure Western European ballet,

Decline the offer,

When people ask if you’re a coffee drinker,

Tell them you’re more of a tea person and proceed to list at least twenty different types,

Describing each with your beautifully expansive vocabulary,

When people ask if you’re a tea drinker,

Tell them you’re more of a coffee person and proceed to talk about your favorite Pacific Northwest independent coffee shops that you wish you could go to,

Bonus points if you name some quaint place in the heart of Seattle,

Don’t forget to Instagram a picture of the latte art,

Become acquainted with people who listen to all of the bands you like,

The ones that play to a crowd of no more than forty in some cramped overheated basement,

Don’t shop at Goodwill or the Salvation Army because it’s too predictable,

Find some small thrift store a few towns over that no one has been to,

Tell your friends all about it even though they don’t ask,

Pretend like you have friends while talking to your friends that you’re pretending to have,

Pretend you’re something you’re not,

Fit the image of your ideal persona,

Join a raging feminist movement and scrutinize social means of oppression,

Remember that there’s still a blatantly evident presence of institutionalized racism and sexism implemented into the system,

Start screaming ‘fuck the system’ as loudly as you can while blogging about how much you hate cops,

Start making -isms,

Fall in love just to say you experienced it,

Say you didn’t care much for it because no one likes to talk about the bad parts,

As soon as it hurts you,

It’s suddenly no longer deemed love,

Make excuses for why it’s not love,

Make it an -ism,

Write poetry,

Crutch on fine-point black ink to remedy your sadness,

Make sure it’s not just a phase and be careful with your words,

Remember that depression is a mental illness,

But illness passes so assume that depression is just a phase,

Just like everyone tells you it is,

Focus your attention to what everyone tells you,

Consume yourself in thoughts of self-worth,

Make sure everyone likes you,

Hold a job just to pay for your bragging rights,

Make sure everyone likes you,

Become well-read with books that your English teacher would like,

It’s not relatable but you’d like to think it is,

Neglect a faith in a higher being,

Praise yourself for being adequate and for your ability to wake up the following morning,

Tell yourself you made it through the last,

Trap yourself in endless ideas of crumpled up paper next to the recycling bin,

Write down every single thing you intend to fix about yourself,

Crumple it up and throw it next to the recycling bin,

Make yourself vulnerable to the next person who greets you with something other than hello,

Make yourself an -ism