We spend billions of dollars to protect our country, but what's the point if behind the walls is a land that's crumbling?

The people who have been running this society have become a pack of grumbling and mumbling fools.

Fools, who decide to make decisions based off of what brings the most profit but is not necessarily what is best for all.

Fools, who sit on thrones of riches, feasting on the fanciest dishes, while those at the bottom cannot even afford the cheapest of fishes and live off of distant wishes.

The lives of the many are controlled by those who are distant, those who don’t understand and can’t comprehend the hardship endured by the people who just want to be listened to.

We turn our eyes to the tragedies across the globe; however we stay blind to the problems existing from coast to coast.

Poverty runs rampant in each and every state, but hours are spent in debate while nothing is getting done and those affected are just trying to do everything in their power to escape.

We praise those in the spotlight when a hand is reached out to help the poor but that is something we should all just naturally do.

In a land controlled by the media, the only ones with a say are the ones hired for entertainment, the ones made up daily to provide an escape for the people suffering, the ones that provide a model for the opinions children are supposed to hold

Society has set a standard in which women have to have big boobs and a big butt but stay a size zero and have no stray hair or facial marks or blemishes.

Women are raised to aspire to be the images they see covering the front of fashion magazines, but how can this be possible when those women aren’t even real women, and computers and airbrushes have removed all abnormalities?

Men over the age of forty are making the laws regarding women and their bodies, of instances of rape, abortion, and harassment when we as women should be the authorities of our own selves.

Little girls are being taught that it is supposed to be okay when men cannot control themselves and objectify women when in reality this is one of the worst crimes being committed.

We are taught to prepare ourselves to be taken care of by a man and wait for the day that our Prince Charming will take us away into the sunset when in reality we can be our own knight on horseback.

Confidence is a power sought after but rarely achieved, insecurities and fears are taught to be concealed behind the happiness that fake smiling illustrates.

The pressure to be perfect transcends the media platform and reaches out to every aspect of the human mind.

It has become a parasite that feasts on even the weakest, the children whom the adults have confined;

Trapped inside of buildings for three quarters of the calendar with standards increasing each year out of fear that we will be left behind.

The pressure augmenting as the competition increases which in turn demands from each of us to have a 4.0 GPA, a perfect SAT score, an MVP award, a mastery of an instrument, a club presidency seat, and an immeasurable amount of volunteer hours just in order to be considered a place at a university.

The insurmountable pressure and anxiety that this creates leads teenagers to paths of self-abuse and mental instabilities that dictate the stereotypes that adults equate us with.

We’re seen as reckless and immature children who do not understand the privileges we are given and instead waste our lives with drugs, pills, or drinks, who need to step back and rethink the path we have begun because we’re headed to the brink of the cliff,

            Which adults are too blind to see that they are pushing us to.

We’re finding our way in a world headed to ruin with increasing prices of living, increasing dangers of disease, increasing hate and discrimination, and decreasing levels of progress and peace.

How are we supposed to find our way in a society that teaches us to compete with each other as if we are vicious animals but still expects us to uphold a brotherly love?

Behind these walls we are suffering, amounting to nothing, shifting to utter plasticity.

Behind these walls we are dying, and if things don't change soon there will be nothing left to protect.