What does wealth mean to me?

Viewing everything from a safe distance. There are two Pasadenas. Below the freeway, above the freeway. I rarely visit the latter. My school is below the freeway. My home, my friend’s homes, my activities, my life. My view of Pasadena is seen through a macro lens, a unrepresentative lens, a unrealistic lens, a sheltered lens. Biking the streets of Lombardy and San Pasqual, swimming at the Langham, eating at the Valley Hunt Club, feeling uncomfortable. What does wealth mean to me? Growing up in Pasadena to a professor father and a curator mother was stable and cozy. My childhood was one for the books. I had the freedom to explore and the guidance to prosper. Now, at 16, I find these things not being enough. Security is no longer cutting it, stability is no longer sufficient. I long for adventure, a change of scenery, a big bang. Call it teen angst, but I’m no longer content with myself, and everything that comes along with that. Walking around Old Town, ignoring news of shootings and gang violence, swimming in friend’s pools. I’ve always been an open and an outgoing person, yet part of me has always wished I exuded more mystery, more enigma. Being an open book becomes tiresome when people think they know everything about you, and pushing the limits is my forte. Two stick-and-pokes, five DIY piercings, and many various hair colors later, I don’t feel any more like myself. I’m always seeking out a way to become more interesting, more cultured, more experienced. Los Angeles is a city with endless opportunities. The epitome of a cosmopolitan microcosm. But Pasadena? Not so much. Its stifling superiority complex leaves far too much room for self consciousness and a need for approval. I try to explore LA as much as I can, but with huge amounts of homework and no driver’s license, it’s proved difficult. Echo Park, Highland Park, Silverlake. Reaping the benefits of gentrification, drinking cold brew around the corner from an underfunded Planned Parenthood, calling poor neighborhoods “hipster” neighborhoods. All these places intrigue me to no end. Passionate cities with passionate people, busy and driven, a stark contrast to the botox infested, social status, and popularity-obsessed area around my school and home. Volunteering at Mother’s Club and spending more time above the freeway in a week than in my whole life combined, treating abandoned houses as playgrounds, giving a dollar to a homeless man. So who am I? Am I a stay-at-home mom with empty nest syndrome and an unhealthy Kate Spade addiction? Am I a starving artist with unshaven armpits and a vegan activist boyfriend? Am I both? Am I neither? These are stereotypes in and of themselves. Can I break free and redefine what it means to be cliche? What is wealth to me? Underappreciating the fact that I have the privilege to wallow in my shallow misery, the privilege of superficial sadness, the privilege of having space to find my way, the privilege of freedom of expression, utilized or not. Privilege.