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| The cover of the journal that I am excerpting in this blog post. I decorated this journal when I was nine years old, so it is not particularly artistic. The cover is cream-colored, with an fleur-de-lys print in lime green on it. The binding is an orangish-yellow. I have placed jewelled shooting star and flower stickers on it, along with stickers featuring platitudes like "True Friends" and "Live Laugh Love". There are two separate stickers with my name written, in different fonts, with the writing smudged. Nine-year-old Lydia was clearly not destined to go into |
Hello!
I am returning with another journal retrospective. Once again, I
am sharing excerpts from a journal that I kept during my senior year of high
school. Per usual, I am making occasional edits for anonymity, grammar, and
accuracy, while keeping the content and character of these journal entries as
they were originally written.
At this point in my life, I was trying to journal daily. I was
also in the midst of the second of two love triangles I was in with the same
two people. You see, my friend E. and I both had a crush on my friend A. during
the first semester of my senior year. And, when I started liking E. instead, E.
continued to have a crush on A. To compile my life’s problems, I was
academically and psychologically a mess, and I had no idea what I was doing
with my life. This journal entry, which was followed by a long and sad rant
about academics and feeling untalented, summarizes my feelings about romance
well:
January
3, 2016
Why are crushes such messy things? Why can’t I be like, “Hey, I’m
interested in you, but I know you’re interested in someone else. Can we talk
about this?” and not feel like a whiny sad baby in the process? I don’t want
people to be upset because of me. I want to make people happy, especially the
people I care about. I just can’t imagine anyone being particularly happy
because I am interested in them. I mean, I can barely visualize someone being
interested in me. Someone being interested in me while I am also interested in
them seems even more unrealistic. Who am I to expect someone to be happy
because I like them?
If I really stretch my imagination,
I can visualize myself in a relationship with someone. But somehow I can’t
visualize myself getting in a relationship with someone I am actually attracted
to. This whole debacle is a pretty good example of how it is very possible to
trust someone and know that they respect you and would treat you with kindness,
but still feel really terrified at the idea of telling them you like
them.
God, I hate whoever came up with the
concept of flirting. I can’t pick up on it! Also, I tend to have crushes on
people who are notably un-vain as of late, so they probably wouldn’t pick up on
it. Then, someone else would and they would be like “Oh my god, Lydia, were you
just...flirting?”,because apparently Lydias are a foreign species that
is not supposed to experience normal human emotions. I mean, what am I supposed
to do?
I also think back to that one time
backstage when A.L. was like, “I have liked this girl for, like, a month. This
has been going on for way too long...I need to ask her out”. And I was sitting
there just thinking “Oh, my, can you imagine? One month is too long?”
Like, the idea of ever asking my crush out is so far off to me. How is that a
thing? How do you even do that? Of course, I can visualize myself asking
some random person out, but I can’t really see myself asking someone I was
interested in out. Oh, decisions, decisions.
As you can tell, I had no idea what I was doing. I remember being
very emotionally conflicted; on the one hand, I considered myself an honest
friend, and it felt inappropriate to have feelings for someone without telling them how I felt. On the other hand, I was afraid that disclosing my feelings
would ruin our friendship, and felt that maybe it wasn’t worthwhile to
jeopardize a friendship so close to graduation.
Eventually, I decided that honesty was the most critical priority,
and that I would disclose my feelings to E. Here I am, giving myself a pep
talk:
January
14, 2016
I know this is scary. But you are a smart,
capable, empowered young person. I know what you’re thinking: “Well, yeah, but
she’s smarter and capabler and more empowered and I’m just...younger.” That
flat out isn’t true. Look at you, Lydia! Stagemanaging a drama production.
Reading thick books. Figuring out that Cyrano de Bergerac characters are gay.
Who wouldn’t want to hang out with you? Non-cool people, that’s who.
While I have grown my confidence and skill set since I was 17,
stage-managing drama productions, reading thick books, and figuring out that
fictional characters are gay are still prime characteristics that I bring to my
friendships. Throughout this journal, there are several passages like this one,
where I am trying my best to be a level-headed person without the benefit of,
like, therapy.
In light of being less than two weeks away from my senior year of
college, I really enjoy this (notably saturated with Glee references)
reflection on change:
January
18, 2016
I never really stop changing, which was
super terrifying to my past self. I wanted to change the way Glee characters
change--where they just come back after the summer and “Oh, hey, Mike and Tina
are dating, and Quinn has gone punk, and Mercedes finally has a boyfriend”.
Instead, most of my changes seemed to involve mood swings and acne. Change,
just, doesn’t work like that. Look at how oversimplified Kurt’s experience is!
He comes out to Mercedes, then his dad, then..oh, hey, wait, he’s totally out
of the closet! If only it was that easy.
Real change is painful and involves a lot
of journaling and tears, no matter how happy it makes you. I’m really excited
for college, but it’s hard to prepare myself to rip off the Band-Aid. I know I
want this, but I keep on having to remind myself that it is worth it. I can do
this. Friendship is hard, but manageable. I want this for myself. I want to
start over. But I still want to maintain connections here, and keep some of my
old friends. I love my friends, and I need to remember that I can still love
them when I love myself enough to leave Arizona. There are so many amazing
people in this world, and I can’t wait to meet more of them!
I have changed more during university than I could have imagined
as a high school student, and I am excited (and genuinely terrified!) to see
how much I change in my post-undergrad life.
Journaling retrospectives are both some of my favorite blog posts
to create, and the most fundamentally embarrassing things I post on this blog.
I am relieved that I have grown from an angsty teen to a slightly-less-angsty
adult. As I said in my last
journaling retrospective, I am glad that writing
acted as an outlet for me when times were tough. And I hope that you, dear
reader, have enjoyed viewing these snippets from my past journal confessionals.
Best wishes,
Lydia
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