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...
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