We Were Never Meant to Be This Tired

Maya was only twenty-one, but her bones ached like they’d carried sixty years of burdens.

She sat in her room, the pale blue glow of her laptop screen reflecting in tired eyes. The tabs open were a familiar chaos—job applications, unpaid internship listings, student loan portals, a news article about climate collapse, and a meditation app she never used.

Outside, the city buzzed. Life moved fast. Too fast. Everyone was running, chasing something—a dream, a paycheck, a version of happiness sold to them on glossy Instagram reels and TikTok trends. Maya wasn’t sure what she was chasing anymore. Or if she was even running.

In school, she was told she could be anything. But no one mentioned the price tag. No one said she'd be drowning in debt before she even had a chance to live. That she’d graduate into a world on fire—economically, environmentally, emotionally. That she'd be too anxious to sleep and too exhausted to feel alive.

Her phone buzzed.

“Hey, you coming tonight? We’re getting drinks.”

A message from Zara. Another night of pretending to be okay. Maya typed back a lie.

“Sorry, studying. Rain check?”

She stared at her phone a moment longer, the feed tempting her. Pictures of friends smiling, influencers selling joy in skincare bottles and thrifted jackets. All so curated. All so fake.

She turned it off and laid back.

Her parents called her generation lazy. Said they had it easy with all this technology. But they didn’t grow up watching the world crumble in real-time. They didn’t wake up to news of mass shootings, housing crises, or the rising cost of eggs. They didn’t have to brand themselves like products just to get noticed.

Maya’s little brother, Liam, was only twelve. He already had anxiety. Already felt he wasn’t enough. Compared himself to kids online who looked perfect, acted perfect. She worried for him. If she felt like she was breaking, what chance did he have?

She thought of her friends. Zara, who worked two jobs and still couldn’t move out of her parents’ place. Ryan, who dropped out of college because he couldn’t afford tuition. Kayla, who smiled every day but had tried to end her life last year. They were all barely holding on, clinging to laughter like it was a lifeline.

No one talked about how sad it was to be young in this age.

There was this pressure to “make it” by twenty-five. Own a home. Travel the world. Have a successful side hustle. Be in shape. Be woke. Be grateful. Be everything.

But how could you bloom when the soil was poisoned?

Maya closed her laptop. She walked to her window and looked at the night. The city lights flickered like stars trying to hold their place in a too-bright sky. Somewhere out there, someone was crying in their bathroom at 2 a.m., trying not to wake their parents. Somewhere, a teen scrolled past a suicide prevention ad and felt nothing.

Somewhere, someone else was also pretending to be okay.

Tears slid down her cheeks quietly. There was no dramatic sob, no outburst. Just silence. The kind that came when you’d cried the same tears too many times before.

And yet, deep down, she still hoped.

She hoped Liam would grow up and find a little peace. That maybe things would change. That the world would soften its edges for the next kids coming up. That someday, being young would feel like it was supposed to—free, wild, full of dreams instead of dread.

Until then, Maya would keep going. Because that’s what her generation did.

They smiled through panic attacks. Laughed through grief. Shared memes about depression like it was normal. They carried the weight of a thousand crises on their backs and still held space for each other’s pain.

It wasn’t fair.

But it was real.

And sometimes, just surviving another day was the bravest thing they could do.