The journal of a teenage girl

I'm so glad I found my journal from my teen years. I began it Thanksgiving Day 1993 as a goofy 12 year old 7th grader who enjoyed using the word "cheesie" entirely too much, and it ended as me heading into college as an extremely scared, shy and somewhat depressed 18 year old Freshman. Even though I generally remember everything I wrote about, it's good to really get down to the deep feelings of it all. It's eye opening, but also kind of hard to read at times. I don't really know how I got to the point where I would say "...oh well, it's not like I'm practicing to be a writer. I used to want to be one but now I know I'm not as creative as I was in elementary school and junior high." I think I partly got to that point because I had a very busy high school experience. Yet it was very lonely at times. I was in Band, National honor society, Choir, Crescendo (girls ensemble at school), Flag Corps, church choir, church girls ensemble, and endless church youth group activities including camps, retreats, mission trips, choir trips, as well as church on Sunday morning and night and Wednesday night. I mean, is that enough for you?? And I of course had school, which I wasn't the top of my class but I squeezed by with an A for my GPA at the end of my high school experience. I'm not saying all this to brag. I'm not involved in any of those things now! I'm not a professional clarinetist, I don't perform in the Flag Corps on any professional level...I know it exists somewhere. I'm definitely not a paid singer of any kind. But I am SO glad that I did all those things. I had a blast doing them and they were really important to me at the time. But I guess it left little time to be creative with my writing. My brain was too full of math I'd never use again and all types of pointless things I learned in school, or lyrics to the endless songs I had to memorize for 4 choirs, and routines to perform with the Flags. I barely wrote in my journal. It ended up being a couple times a year sometimes. I did mention that I kept it hidden because I was always afraid someone would read it, not that my Mom gave me any reason to think she would, but every kid worries about having their deepest feelings exposed. So, I often forgot I had it, since it wasn't out where I could see it. Sophomore year I wrote about my plans to take a writing class my senior year, but when the time came I didn't. I was in too many extracurricular classes as it is, with 2 different choir classes. I didn't have the time. I wouldn't have had the time to do all that extra writing outside of class anyway, what with all my after school rehearsals and practices and such. I don't know I regret it though. I loved all that I did and was involved in. Looking back on everything now, I wouldn't change WHAT I did, but I would like to have changed how I felt or responded to people and experiences, things like that. However, I was at the place emotionally I was at because, that's just who I am. If I went back now, I guess I would be a 33 year old stuck in a 17 year olds body and everything would be different in my mentality and how I thought and responded to people and situations, but that's only because I've matured as I got older. I've experienced SO much more since then. I've learned and grown. I can't be that person again, just because of nature and how our mental and emotional selves grow. They just do. At least for most people they do.
I wrote about how I was scared out of my mind to go to college. It sounded like a big, scary, lonely place, and I was even going with 3 of my closest church/school friends. But I was already feeling like I was losing them before we even left. I was struggling personally, and it left me feeling like they were leaving me out and didn't care about me anymore. My fears weren't subsided when all three of them got married literally the second we graduated college, and I saw them next to never again. I wrote how confusing my senior year was. How "my self-esteem plummeted 100 points. I still cannot get over the feelings I have about myself." I think these feelings were that I hated who I was and I hated being sad and depressed all the time. I said I was looking for a "best friend," but I had higher expectations of my friends than they could perform. And it wasn't their fault at all. I didn't know what I wanted at the time, I was completely unaware of any of it, but I think what I wanted was a deep emotional and physical connection that none of them could provide, because they were all looking for that... in a guy. I wanted an "intense friendship," I wrote. I didn't even know what I meant by that. Being gay wasn't a part of my world at all.  I didn't know anyone that was, it never crossed my mind at all, it wasn't on my TV, it wasn't on the radio, and the internet was barely a thing and I didn't have a computer anyway.
My church, which was my everything, let me down in a HUGE way. I already knew that I couldn't afford to go to Baylor, but it's the only place I wanted to go and so while I got a small chick-fil-a scholarship since I worked there, and some grants, I knew I was going to be paying for college for practically the rest of my life. So when I didn't get the church scholarship I thought for sure was an easy one to get, I was more than disappointed; I was crushed, I was devastated. I didn't understand what I did wrong. I was an A student and heavily involved in both church and school activities. I even somehow managed to be on s student of council of sorts very briefly, at church. I had been going to this church for 10 years and the ones that were given the scholarship had only been there a couple of years. It seemed that the only thing the others had that I didn't have, was money. Their parents were rich and they tithed more to the church than many parents did, that I knew to be true. My parents ended up leaving that church and going to another one, not right away though. I too didn't come back but a time or two, since I was in college anyway, but also because they had really hurt me.

I also documented my experience with boys before college, which was this: I asked a guy I worked with at chick-fil-a to go to a movie with me, on the fact that he was funny, nice, he talked to me at work, and he put his hand on my back when he passed me when I was doing dishes in the kitchen. We accidentally wore the exact same outfit- khaki pants, a sweater and brown shoes, and we saw "meet Joe black," which I remember nothing about. I found out later he had a girlfriend, so apparently he didn't consider that movie anything but going to see a movie with a co-worker. I also went to Senior prom with pretty much the only boy I talked to from church, who I had so much fun doing the Easter Story 3 years in a row, with. It was this big musical production our church used to do. He was a Junior at a different school, and I went in knowing he had a girlfriend at the time. He spent most of the night talking to my best friend who made me go with her and her date, in the first place. I didn't even want to go to prom, but my Mom wanted me to go because she didn't go, and my best friend wanted me to go too, she actually set up the whole thing for me. Anyway, my date doesn't play for my team anymore anyway... nor do I... wait I'm confused. Eh, you get what I mean. So I didn't have the best track record, as you can tell. This is me going into college: "I just cannot speak to guys very well, it's like they're aliens and I don't know what to say. I usually don't speak or I say something stupid. I'm usually okay with guys younger than me, but at Baylor they'll all be my age or older and I'm going to freak out, I just know it." And yet I met my first boyfriend that first year... didn't start dating till the summer after, but he was a whole year and a half older than me. So I guess I proved myself wrong. I had managed not to freak out too much. But we were friends first my whole freshman year, so he knew me really really well before we had even kissed.
Re-reading the final pages of my journal I'm reminded how incredibly scared I was going into college. I had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. That and my time in Colorado were both the best and worst times of my life. Isn't that weird to say? Isn't that contradictory? But it's true. Both times held the happiest, most fulfilling moments and friendships, and both my relationships with guys, in my entire life. And then they held the most pain I've ever felt, and loss and pushed to the brink, having everything you held in highest importance ripped from you. It's interesting that those two extremes can come from the same place. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think taking the biggest risks can often times give you the biggest rewards. It might also be followed by everything being ripped away, but that's a part of life. And I wouldn't trade any of those experiences for anything, just to not have those really bad times remembered. It's like that movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." She gets all her memories of him erased. But you're taking the good along with the bad. I wouldn't want that taken from me, not for the world! I loved those times where I was the happiest and most fulfilled and loved and cared about so deeply by my closest friends and boyfriends. Sure when everyone left me it sucked, but at least I still have those amazingly good memories. I wrote down on the last page of this journal, this quote I saw on a bathroom stall in the shared bathroom down the hall of my Freshman dorm: "Recall it as often as you wish. A happy memory never wears out." And so I will...

Words are good and fun and stuff

Oh wow! It's been a whole month since I've written a blog post, and that's not because I suddenly got a life. No, I've just been busy writing my fictional story about a real live 15 year old me, set at the end of 1995. I'm 91 pages in... and nowhere near an ending. It would be all that and a bag of chips, if I were to get it published one day in book form. That would be like the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have so many thoughts running through my head right now, this will probably be a very random blog, but that's not saying much, because many of mine are. I try to get a theme going, though, in most. So, no segway here but, it's obvious if you know me at all, that I LOVE TV. Like love it love it. Almost 100% of my conversations with my Dad are about the shows we watch, and we watch a lot of the same shows, he watches almost everything I do. I got my love of TV from him, and if he were a deadbeat Dad who never got a job and never provided for us, and I in turn were not a college grad with an actual job providing for myself completely and utterly 100% on my own, well... then I would say "lay off the TV and get a life already." But he is not those things, and I am a productive member of society, so I think we're fine. The Walking Dead is our favorite show. He is totally going with me to the "Walker-Stalker con" in March (yes that is really what it's called). To prove how much I used to be scared of zombies and refused to watch it for years (I just watched all the seasons last summer) I had nightmares just from watching Zombieland. Yeah that's right, it's a comedy and meant to poke fun at it. Well, needless to say, I gave in and am now the biggest Walking Dead fan ever. I am even making a T-shirt to wear at the event that says "Beth is not dead." Just in the hopes that Emily Kinney will give me a thumbs-up, as I pass by her. I'm such a dork, I know, it's been established. It is the best written show there has ever been or will ever be. It is perfection, even if they kill off characters I like. But enough about The Walking Dead. So there's this other show called Hindsight and it basically is about a woman who wakes up back in 1995 the day of her first wedding and is able to make different choices in her life and yada-yada. What's cool about it, besides being a pretty well-written show and the only scripted show to hit VH1, thus being the only show I've watched on VH1, with the exception of that "I love the 80s" show I watched years and years ago, that talked about the great fun things from my childhood and other things I had only vaguely heard about, because I was too young to really know about them. So what's cool about Hindsight, is that I'm able to get some more ideas of awesome 90s stuff for my story. Like for instance clothes and music. What was fun to see in the first 3 episodes thus far, is that I have already claimed several songs they've thrown in, as my own in my story. It's kinda neat that I start my 1995 story just before this one came out. It's like I'm "trendy" or "popular" for the first time ever. Ok, and the 3rd and final TV reference I'll make in this blog is to the HBO show Girls. I've watched all the seasons, but so far I like this one the best because they seem a bit less whiny and trying to "grow up" and join the real world more. I was too young to relate to Sex and the City when it came out and too old for Girls, but at least I had Felicity, which was on when I was in college as well, although I didn't start watching it till it's last season and then went back and started from the beginning. REALLY great show, by the way. But I can't go into that now, I said I was on my last show reference... and I lied. So in Girls, Hannah (Lena Dunham, writer, creator ect), is also a writer in the show. She's at this college for a writing program, kinda like a Masters I'm guessing. Everyone has so much to say about her writing (not good stuff), and it definitely makes me never want to take a writers workshop, unless I can just give my writing to a teacher-like older person and they can email me their critiques. I don't think I could ever read my writings out loud to a group of fellow writers and have them tell me how flawed, or weak or immature or whatever they want to say it is. My writing is deeply personal (despite being out there on the internet for anyone to read). I don't welcome comments, unless to say you love it, and that's the way I like it. So will I ever get my "1995" story of a 15 year old girl discovering her true self when she meets a girl that opens new doors for her and changes her life forever, published? Probably not. But that's ok. I share it with those I trust and who I don't think would be weirded out by young love of a lesbian nature. These friends are few and far between, but maybe one day I'll share it with more.... lesbians probably, but maybe the world. Who knows. Everyone always says "Do what you love," and I believe it. They didn't say "you'll get paid to do what you love," and that's got to be ok with you. What I love is writing. As awesome as it would be to make a ton of money on one book so that I could quit my job and really focus all my time and energy on writing more, that's probably not going to happen. I'm not Lena Dunham. That's alright. In my 1995 story, the character Christie is me, totally me at 15. I have a different family and live in a different state, to make it more interesting and a change from how I grew up, but I love that my personality and what I loved and wore and listened to and watched, is all me. I remember my senior year of high school I chose to take a girls ensemble class, despite already being in Choir, over taking a writing class. I didn't have the ability to take more "extracurricular" classes than those. I had already dropped band, after playing the clarinet since the 6th grade, I suddenly stopped senior year. Didn't even want to finish that last year. I was done. I always regretted not taking that Creative Writing class, though. Where could I be now if I had taken it? Maybe nowhere. Maybe I'd still be the same exact person I am. I knew I was going to Baylor. I knew my strength was working with children. I had done it since I was 12 years old, practically still a child. So, that class might not have made a bit of difference other than being fun for me. But maybe, as it will in my 1995 story, it spurred me on to apply for a writing program with a college, which leads to an internship at a publishing company. Maybe I become a junior copywriter, and then who knows what. I don't really know the whole process anyway, I'm not completely sure what a copywriter does in the first place, I've just heard that word in movies. But my point is, in a story you can be anything. You can HAVE anything. If you think it up, it's yours. I love writing like that. I hope I can keep writing till I'm old and gray. I hope they develop technology that can take my thoughts as an old lady and put them in print form on a computer, so I don't even have to talk or type. One of the best things about writing is being able to go back and read what you were thinking at one point in time. I have a journal (one of many), from 1995, from a trip to Centrifuge (a Christian camp my church youth group went to in North Carolina). The whole trip was 10 days long, and I wrote everyday in it. I'm so glad I did that. To be able to go back and read about every little thing I did there, how I was feeling, what cool popular older kid talked to me that week instead of being the invisible girl I was most of the time; all that is priceless. I could never remember all that, but I don't' have to, it's in the pink journal with the cat on the cover that looked like my cat Oreo, that my Mom got me right before we left. I first started journaling the previous summer, in 1994. That June I broke my leg on my 13th birthday. It was the worst thing to happen to me in my entire life up to that point and was quickly followed by the 2nd worst thing- my best friend moved out of state like a week after I broke it. She was the same friend that was there when I broke it and I distinctly remember her trying to climb into the ambulance to go with me, but of course they weren't going to let a 13 year old girl ride in an ambulance. It was all so surreal. I felt like I had left my body and was watching it happen to someone else. My leg was dangling in my hand when I lifted it after I fell on it. I knew it was broken, I heard it snap. It didn't hurt right then, because I was in shock, but later at the hospital I pushed the morphine drip till it wouldn't give me any more. I had broken my left femur in half. Like half half. Seriously, I wish I had the X-ray, the bone was side by side. I still have the steel rod though, that they put in and left in for about a year. And I still have that 6 inch scar on my left hip where they went in to put it in and take it back out after my leg had fused itself back together again. After that happened and my best friend moving, the 3rd worst thing happened, I couldn't go to my first youth camp, having just finished the 7th grade, which triggered events that led to my other 2 best friends from my grade at church, to bond further to each other and forget I existed for the better part of our teens. It's alright though, I made new friends eventually. I even reconnected with one of them towards the end of High School. But the best thing, the only good thing to come out of it was that, that was the summer I started journaling. Sure I'd written many stories I made up or even a "Dear diary, I had pizza today at school" type of writing in the previous years, but it wasn't until this huge life change and set-back (at least for a 13 year old girl who church was her entire life and to miss out on the first youth camp! That was just unacceptable); that I began to really write down my deepest feelings and emotions. I haven't re-read them in years, I can't remember much now, but I still have it, and it most likely had to do with losing friends. To a 13 year old girl, friends are everything, there really isn't anything else. Especially this girl who didn't have crushes on boys or think they were cute at all. So in the end it all worked out. Maybe I wouldn't had started writing, in a deep way, if it hadn't been for that leg break. Or maybe it wouldn't have come till much later. Writing is so powerful. It's why I'm pulled to really well-written TV shows, and how I despise reality shows, to the point that I weep for humanity as their brains are turned to mush from this horribly stupid and pointless nonsense of people competing for "true love" and slapping each other and getting drunk just so they can yell some more at each other, because people who are sober don't yell as much. And don't even get me started on SpongeBob. This is destroying the brains of our children... and the adults that they grow into and continue to watch it, as it seems to have been on since the beginning of time. But anywho, I digress. I love to share my writing. My blog is for everyone and my other stories are for the few, but really just one person who consistently asks to read more and always tells me how much she loves my writing, because I write in such detail that she can actually see everything that is happening. Even just sharing it with one person, makes me feel good. There's a difference between writing for yourself (your emotions and struggles and pain and hopes and dreams), and writing so someone else can read it. It makes it more real. If just one person reads it, it makes you feel not invisible in this world of too much information. There's far too many books, blogs, articles to read. It would be impossible to read them all, even if you wanted to. But I don't know, there's just something about knowing that you're known by someone else, in this way, through the words you've written. It's special. It makes me feel alive and I'm grateful for this person and she knows who she is. She's read every blog and several things I've written. She'll be reading this very blog as well, probably in the next day or two. As my eyes are starting to droop, the time has come to end. Sometimes it's difficult to end. Sometimes my body fails my mind. There's always more to say. Again, it would be awesome if I could think my thoughts and have them typed out for me on my computer. That would be the coolest thing ever and needs to be invented now. Before I start to unravel and make much less sense than I probably already am now, I will end this blog post. I will stop writing. Tonight. Not forever. Never forever. Long live writing.

Oh 2008!

I found a little notepad when I was cleaning and on the first page, (as well as the only thing written in it), was a list of my 10 favorite things of 2008. I believe it was written in the summer time, based on some of the entries. Here they are:
1. Meeting Joshua Radin
2. Steak n'shake cheeseburgers and skinny fries
3. My perfect sized efficiency apt
4. My new 27 inch TV. It's huge!!
5. Coldplay's new CD released on my birthday.
6. My super empty apartment pool and raft
7. "The Office"
8. $4.50 movies
9. The return of  blue bell ice cream
10. New friends.
I had moved back home to Texas from my 2 year adventure in Colorado, at the end of 2007. I was defeated and had lost my money, all of my friends (except my best friend from there) and an almost fiancé. I had moved home for a couple months, but started out 2008 in my very own efficiency apartment. It's all about perspective. In Colorado, I had always had to have roommates wherever I lived, since I couldn't afford the rent on my own, and the only TV I had was what I could fit along with everything else I brought, in my SUV, which was a tiny one that fit on the floor of my car. That one room apartment was small, but it was all mine. In Colorado they didn't have Blue Bell Ice Cream or steak n-shake, which ended up being right by my apartment, when I moved back at the time. I also had my own pool a few feet away, no one ever came to it, it was so small and there were otheres scattered all over the huge apartment village, and a much bigger one at the country club where all the parties were held. I also met Joshua Radin, he's a singer-songwriter and my favorite male artist, for the first time. I've seen him 5 times now and met him 3 or 4 times). And the new friends I referenced, well I can say that I am still friends with one of those girls to this day. She leant me her car this week while mine was in the shop. The point is, most of these things are not huge and amazing things, they don't even seem that great to me now, but at the time they were everything. It's all about perspective. I may not have the one thing I want in all the world, but today I have far better things than even what's on this list, 6 years ago. I now live in a house, much much bigger than that efficiency apartment. My TV is much bigger than that one, 42 in. I think. Unfortunately steak n'shake is gone but Twisted Root is here and it is even better than steak n'shake. The Office is gone, but Parks and Rec replaced it...(which is about to be gone as well, but let's not speak of that, it just makes me sad). Maybe Brooklyn nine-nine will replace it. It's pretty funny, but maybe too soon to tell. Change is hard. But change can bring about better things. Better things that all of your favorite things of that year. I'm going to sit down and make a top 10 list for 2014. Maybe in 6 years I'll read it and think how awesome it is that my "favorite things" are nothing compared to what I have now. That's going to be be fun. Looking forward to that. Also looking forward to discovering more new favorite things this year. Things I haven't even thought of yet, or haven't even experienced yet. No matter how small, every year brings newness; new favorites, new experiences, new people. You gotta be grateful for every little thing you have... even if it's just ice cream and cheeseburgers.