I guarantee that every single person in this world will feel a loss of contentedness at some point in life. If not, then they are living life the right way, and whatever they are drinking, I need it too. Lately, I have been feeling a loss of something—nothing I can touch or see—but a feeling that was in my heart and now it’s lost. It’s not like I lost my phone or my shoe—I can’t see what I lost. I can’t touch what I lost. And I will spend years trying to retrieve what I have lost.

I believe what I have lost is innocence, love and the ability to find raw emotion within myself. All of it was taken away by the years of suffering I, and many others, have gone through. To try to cover my loss, I tried to fill the space with other things—things that were toxic to my heart. Things like partying, boys, and dating. All of this was just an attempt to re-fill the part of me that was missing, but instead I just created a bigger hole inside myself.

When I took my first drink, I washed away piece of innocence. When I had my first kiss, I felt lust and forgot love. When I had my first heartbreak, I learned how to not feel, how to push my emotions aside for both myself and the other guy. Every day I woke up to find nothing but loss and defeat within myself. I was still smiling on the outside and doing things I knew were wrong, not because of peer pressure or trying to fit in, but because I needed to. Without the fake love, lust and innocence, I had an empty body full of sadness. And I was not ready to be sad.  The fact is, every high school student has felt the way I have felt.

The truth is hidden behind the fog of what we want our lives to seem like, and the only way to clear the fog was to find something or someone that could clear it for me. For me the something that cleared my fog was faith—faith that there has to be someone out there drawing my path out; faith that all the bad will eventually lead me to good; faith that I won’t always have a hole in my heart. I have to hold on to faith because that’s how I can rationalize life. I believe that there is something or someone out there ready to take away my pain and fill me back up with my innocence, my love and my feelings. There has to be. I can’t think and go through life without something to look forward to.

I think all students need that—they need hope. They need to escape a little bit of reality and think: Why am I here? There needs to be a better purpose for my life.  People are made for all sorts of special reasons. And no matter who you are, trust me, you will find out why you are here someday. And once you do, you will forever be content in life. But for now, we will stay lost in our emotions, in our thoughts and in our hearts.