The Game Of Life

A Fun Board Game You Used To Play At Your Grandma’s House, Until Your Reach Your Twenties And Realize That Maybe It’s Not A Game

Sophia LaRocca

Published, September 29th, 2024

A core memory growing up for me was playing boardgames on the floor of my Grandma’s Brooklyn apartment. I remember the smell of the apartment, the smooth feel of the floor, the TV playing soap operas in the background, and the smell of the games. My game of choice always for some reason was the game of Life.

I liked watching my player grow up, have kids, get married, graduate. And of course, if you ever played the game of Life, you know that the dice is what chooses the path for you to go on.

But now that I’m in my twenties and I’m getting older I’m finding that the board game really does come to life. With the options and the path you choose, it seems like there is an obstacle every which way you turn. And better yet, as you get older you realize that there is no dice to tell you which path to take.

Up until college or until you graduate high school, societal norms sort of play the role of dice since you were born. Weather it be your parental guardians, your teachers, or your confines. For example; You really don’t have a choice from when you’re born up until you graduate high school. You could choose little things. Like what activities to do outside of school or what friends to make, but really, for the first eighteen years of your life you are bound to the system of education. Plus, your parents make all your decisions for you.

So suddenly when you leave high school, it’s like having the dice taken from you. Let me explain.

Once again. Your confines, parental guardians, or teachers play as your dice until you turn eighteen, which would offically make you an adult. And how our society is set up is that once you turn eighteen, you’re thrown to the wolves and the dice is ripped from your hands as soon as you get that high school diploma. Now it is all up to you to decide what path you want to go on.

Which sucks, because the first eighteen years of your life, you had all these people making the decisions for you. And now all the sudden, you don’t anymore. Often leading to the wrong decisions.

But what really is the ‘wrong decision?’

I’ve been in an extreamly tough spot lately because I thought I knew what I was going to do, I thought I had it all figured out. Like the rest of the world—although a little late—I was going to head off to college. I could have went to college straight after high school but I graduated during Covid, and that would have just been a mess. So I took another path. I worked and saved up for college and now finally the time has come. And well… I’m not sure that is the right path either.

That leads me to the question; How do we know which path to take?

With no more dice, how do we know what path to roam?

Do we get a feeling? Chills? Does our heart start to race? Do we get giddy?

My whole life I knew I was meant to write stories. With everything in me since I wrote my first little book in first grade that my teacher was so impressed with. I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I have never felt so passionately about something. Ever. So confident as well. I know I was put on this earth to write.

So I do.

And I feel like it doesn’t get anywhere, therefore, I grow fraustrated and decided to submit to societal norms like college and student loans. And I sit here shaking my head because I want so bad the college experience… but do I want college?

I would love to be a fashion journalist, and that’s what I would be going to college for. And boy, do I think I would be a great one. But does it out way my want of being a successful author… I don’t think so.

But maybe some people have these pipe dreams, these dreams that they know were meant for them… but it just doesn’t happen. Or it happens to them later in life, I don’t know. All I know is that I’m restless. Absolutely restless.

I see people younger then me living their best lives, and getting apartments, and I envy that! Of course I do. Because I want it so bad and I beat myself up over it so bad that it feels like it’s killing me. I feel like an acrobat who keeps reaching for a rope over and over again and can never get it.

I want my independence so bad I could taste it and I cry myself asleep more often then not because I’m in a constant state of falling behind since I was young.

How am I supposed to know the path of college is the right path?

I don’t know if I want college or I just want to move on in life and see college as a way out, the next step.

I feel like a failure the longer I stay at the job I’m at and not get a college education or become successful because of what the media feeds us. Our generation is constantly fed multi millionaires at twenty-five on social media and we’re tricked into thinking that’s normal! That’s what we have to look up to.

I told my therapist I felt like I was staring at three paths and I was scared to go down any of them because I don’t know which one would lead to success, and that’s where the idea for this article came from.

I know I was put here on this earth to write. What, I don’t know.

I’m having a hard time losing my dice, maybe a harder time then others. And maybe that’s my problem. We’re thrown into a society set up to fail us and if you think too hard about the decision you make, you’re bound to find flaws in it. Because there are flaws in everything.

Wether it’s living with our parents until you’re thirty, being thousands of dollars in debt from student loans, or going to the college you didn’t want, but could afford. It seems like the system was made to fail us.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I think too much into it. But I sit here everyday and write and write and write but am told by others I don’t work hard because I’m not studying for a test like a student in college would. Working hard for whom? Me or you?

Do I want to be an Uber successful author with no college debt, or bound to a college for four years with tons of debt and a piece of paper that says I graduated. Maybe I’d be able to move out sooner, maybe I’d actually make some friends, maybe I’d get the taste of the life I so desperately want.

Or maybe I’m just thinking too much into it.