Max Scoville's Teenage Garbage Vortex

Well, I have great news: any newly-minted 17-year-old who claims to have any idea what they’re doing is either stupid, delusional, lying, or utterly extraordinary. Being a teenager straight-up sucks for a variety of biological, sociological, and dermatological reasons, so it’s normal to have some anxiety about what you’re doing with the rest of your life.

The most common misconception in society is that “growing up” is a thing that happens all at once. “Growing up” is something you’ll spend your whole life doing. In the past few months, two of my closest friends had to bury their mothers. I’m getting married this year. People are having babies left and right. It sneaks up on you; it’s not like you wake up one day suddenly having it figured out.

I turned 31 a few months ago, and I barely know how taxes work, along with a mess of other adult shit. You gradually get the hang of it. Don’t be afraid to ask people for help, or to look stuff up online. The personal finance subreddit is full of people just like you (and me) asking “stupid” questions, and the community’s surprisingly great at providing helpful answers. The subreddits about sex, male fashion advice, and lifehacks are also useful for obvious reasons.If you’re lukewarm about college, my best advice is to go to community college, and take some classes that are incredibly useful, that you can put on a resume like business, welding, or IT. Conversely, you can also take incredibly stupid and frivolous classes that will give you a good idea of what you want to be when you grow up, even if they’re in totally impractical fields like archery, film history, or printmaking.

In theory, community college is an affordable way of getting college credit that you can use to transfer to a university, getting certified in a particular field, or figuring out that school just isn’t for you without racking up a mountain of student debt. Of course, because community college is lower stakes, it’s easy to get stuck there. I knew people on their eighth year, who were always “transferring to [State University] next spring.”

Another piece of advice is to try and get experience working food service, because it’s fairly universal. Ideally, something other than fast food, but everyone’s gotta start somewhere. You’ll probably start out bussing or washing dishes, but experienced waiters and bartenders can make decent money on tips, and they tend to have a pretty good time doing it. Get in on that as soon as legally possible. It’s not something you necessarily want to make a career out of, but it can put you through college, or keep a roof over your head until you get your big break as whatever the hell you decide to be when you grow up.

It’s embarrassing how bad I am at recognizing what’s going on in my own head. Toward the tail end of this week, which felt like a slow blurry montage of nothing being accomplished, I spontaneously got the urge to listen to Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. It’s a fantastic album that everyone should listen to at some point, but isn’t exactly the most upbeat thing to bump on a commute to work.

Last night, I watched Mother, the latest Aronofsky movie. I’d expected it to gut me as much as Requiem For a Dream or The Wrestler did, and it was good, but it unfortunately didn’t provide the S&M-grade cathartic ass-kicking I was after. So, I got drunk and rewatched End of Evangelion -- possibly the most upsetting thing ever animated -- and broke down crying during the finale.

It didn’t fully click until this afternoon that, hey, maybe I’m in a funk again? Listening to gloomy music and watching sad movies aren’t symptoms, but when you pair them with a general malaise, a pattern begins to form.

Depression is a sneaky fucker of a disorder, and it’ll frequently show up disguised as boredom, exhaustion, or everyday frustration, and it can pass in an instant, leaving no trace and making you wonder if anything was ever wrong in the first place. It’s like teenagers in an 80s movie who buy beer with a fake ID, throw a crazy party, and miraculously clean the whole house before mom and dad get home. But, instead of everything awesome I just described, it’s your own brain chemistry gaslighting you into a feeling of miserable isolation.

Depression’s sneaky bullshit is made worse by the stigma surrounding it, and how much of a pathetic bullshit disorder it probably looks like to anyone on the outside, looking in. It’s an illness that makes doing the most basic of tasks seem like insurmountable challenges, and it will make your favorite things seem boring and unappealing. This, of course, means it’ll reject both positive and negative reinforcement.

I’ve never been exactly ashamed of dealing with depression, but I avoid talking about it because it feels like a cry for attention, or like a girl on her period faking shin splints to avoid running laps in gym class. There are way worse things to suffer from than depression, and honestly, I have a great life... And that’s exactly the thought process that keeps so many people from talking about it or dealing with it. When I’m really at my worst (and thankfully, I’m not there right now) it’s terrifying how much of a fight I’m in with my own brain. I haven’t been outright suicidal in a long time, but when I’m in a really dark place, dying sounds like a nice thing. Like a Sunday afternoon nap, or a vacation. That’s what’s so fucking terrifying. For your own brain to not recognize basic survival as a priority, and to have to consciously remind yourself to ignore that thought process.

Mostly, when I’m in a bad place, I just hate myself. And I know that’s not a normal or healthy way to feel, so I tell myself to ride it out, and to take everything my brain is telling me with a grain of salt, whether that’s in regards to self-worth, interests, or what I’m capable of doing.

Absolutely, I’ve done a few Study Hall-esque features for IGN, but serializing it hasn’t really panned out. In terms of art books, Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo’s Kaba2 is incredible if you can find it for a decent price. It’s a ton of his non-Akira illustration/commercial work.

The J.W. Rinzler Making Of Star Wars series is great, along with Star Wars Costumes by Brandon Allinger.