Someday I’ll Laugh About This

There she is in all her glory--all 356 pages, 218,965 words of depressing teenage angst. Some entries clear as day, some so cryptic even I can't tell what I was talking about almost ten years ago.

Someday I'll Laugh About This is nearly two and a half years worth of journal entries written from May 1998 through August 2000, a time in which I was determined to discover myself while lost in a world I couldn't and wouldn't understand. I was hell bent on writing about everything, not for documentary purposes, but because I saw it as a release, as my only chance of figuring myself out and escaping the deep, dark hole my high school years buried me in. Every entry is full of self-analysis, how I felt, and reasons why I may have I felt that way, and sometimes, even an ill-planned attempt at figuring out how I could stop myself from feeling that way should I have to. They almost never worked.

I chose the title back in 1998 for its irony. I never thought I would actually laugh about any of it, but in reading it for the first time since writing, I'm finding the title is actually quite fitting. I may not be laughing at all of it, some of it still gives me that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach and can bring me to tears, but my cynicism always has me laughing out loud. I grumbled about having to wear a dress for my older sister's wedding. The title for December 31, 1999's entry was "The Last Entry of the Century". I freaked out when it was discovered that Jon had a crush on me. I wrote about everything, including how my parents just didn't understand.

I've spent the last two months re-configuring and editing all of it in a Word document, printing and hole-punching each page, and wrapping it all up in a three-ring binder, and I'm not sure why. I have no intentions of attempting to publish it. Some morbid part of me is tempted to use it as my new coffee table book. I figure maybe that way I can hand it to my family and say "Here is that girl you never understood." The problem is I still don't think they will. I don't even understand her. Instead, the attractive binder will remain on my office shelves as a reminder of who I was and who I am for years to come, although I won't complain should it someday become reference material for the next Reviving Ophelia.

And now, after all that teasing, I leave you with a sample:

I AM A WRITER

Unfortunately, only in my head. I think up some of the most amazing thoughts in my head, ready myself for a journal entry, and in the midst of rewording and twisting everything around so that it makes sense to everyone else, it's too distorted to become anything near what it originally was. It was always the same thing with my poetry. I'd have nearly the entire poem written out in my head, but once I began to place those words on paper or a computer screen, I kept rephrasing and changing it until it was horrible and I couldn't remember the words that kept the poem running beautifully in the first place. If only people could hear my thoughts, then they'd know just what kind of talent I have.

I AM A COWARD

I can't stand my ground when it comes to anything, even the things that I believe in most. If I'm given a problem I'll either continuously tell you that I am undecided until you forget about it, find someone else to take care of it, or cry until everyone takes pity on me. If I'm hurt I won't fess up to it, I'll let it roll around in my head until I'm able to twist and turn you into one of the most insensitive people I've ever met. I don't know how to stand up for myself, explain myself, or come anywhere close to justifying myself. I'm afraid of my own basement because of my silly imagination. I can't sleep without my TV on because my house makes far too much noise in the silence. I can't sit in a dark room while the closet door is open. I can't drive. Heh, I can't even go to school.

I AM A THINKER

My mind loves playing tricks on me. How else would you expect me to live with a job that consists of a bunch of people who hardly even consider me staff because of my position? Where noisy little children are screaming across the room, and where I'm looking at numbers and letters for eight hours a day? I think. I think about all of my problems, about my life, about anything that happens to pop into my head because of some title of a book that I just shelved. I think about how lonely I am, about how weak and tired I am. I think about what I'm going to do when I get home and how I'm going to deal with it when I do. I even analyze poetry sometimes, working the words to fit my own current and personal mood. Yeah, that's my way of analyzing poetry. I think of ways to solve the world's problems, or what I would do in certain, unfortunate situations. I can think about anything if you just let me, but I'm warning you, it's hazardous.

I AM A LOVER

I am convinced that I always give too much of myself. I care too much, I worry too much, I listen too well, and sob over you way too many times. But mostly I don't mind. It's my nature to dive into someone the moment I'm given the okay and soak up all of the warmth I can so that I can return it times ten. I let you become my world as long as you say it's okay because I find pleasure in being able to love you so much. I love to hold and be held, to kiss and be kissed. I thrive on one on one time and feel empty when it's not there. I hurt myself when I hurt you and cry whenever you cry. I'm sensitive to anything you do, but maybe that's because I'm too open to you.

I AM A DREAMER

I hope that someday I'll be able to change. That at one point I'll be able to accept that everything will not work out as I wish, and probably come nowhere near what I would expect it to be. But, until then, I can only dream. I can only wish that I could write things down just as I thought of them so that people would actually find me remotely interesting. I can only hope that I'll learn how to speak up for myself and let everyone else know what is going on in my head before they all give up. I can beg for the chance to have something close to a happy thought or memory that didn't take place over a year ago. And I can lie myself down and give everything I have to imagining a relationship that doesn't feel so one-sided. But, of course I can always dream, it's just that sometimes it causes more pain than it does provide help.

Destructive Behavior

In my last phone conversation with Jon I very calmly informed him that when I get home from work today I am going to do nothing but sit on the front stoop. This understandably confused him until I explained that it is the only safe place for me. It is the only place lacking something for me to break.

It all started on Monday with the Internet connection. As recently as this morning the small icon located in the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor indicated that we have a good signal coming from the wireless router, but try as I might, Internet Explorer won't recognize it and is accusing me of not being connected. I've unplugged and re-plugged everything, I've set the system back two days, I've done everything short of calling our cable/internet provider (I know I should do this, but I also know I'll come off as a total ditz), but it just doesn't work. Add to it that I didn't know what I was doing when I set the system back to September 9 and I lost my 114,145 words/156 pages Word document in which I had invested two days and too much blood, sweat, and tears to count. I did manage to figure out how to restore the system to the current date to recover the hours of painstaking work, but any damage done thereafter has gone unrecognized and I'm sure Jon will find it when he returns.

As if going a week without the Internet at home wasn't bad enough, in the last three days I have also managed to destroy two remotes, a television, and a DVD player just with my touch. I swear to you I have not thrown, stomped on, or beaten a single thing. They just don't like me. I have a sinking suspicion that karma is messing with me, a practical joke of sorts, because why else would only the items that I haven't the slightest clue of how to operate, except on a very basic level, be malfunctioning while my husband isn't around to fix it? And isn't it ironic that they are also my main sources of entertainment for while I'm alone?

And so, to be on the safe side, I'll be making a night of the front stoop where I'm far away from the circuit breakers and the water heaters and, God forbid, the yellow Mitsubishi Lancer parked in the garage.

The Same Difference

Written yesterday, but due to unforeseen server problems and my lack of knowledge to fix them, it is being posted late.


I am exhausted. I had a fairly easy time falling asleep last night. I even think the extra room to spread out helped me with that, but the dogs... Oh, the dogs. I think they still expected Jon to come walking through the door even after I turned off all of the lights and climbed into bed. With every little sound they began howling as if an army of squirrels were setting up camp in the living room. They were alert, primed, and ready to protect me, while waiting for Jon to come home at any moment. It feels as though they woke me up every hour on the hour, and I had to reach out to them, to pet them, and to coo at them, and give my most convincing "Everything is okay." Around 4:00 I realized that I was going to lose this battle, and so I just started mumbling "Shut up" from under my pillow. I'm hoping they will let me sleep better tonight, although I'm half convinced that I'm tired enough to sleep right through it even if they keep up the shenanigans.

I've taken on a new project for while Jon is out of town. I decided it was time to take those 3 years worth of online journal entries from my teens off of the 10-year-old floppy disk they have been stored on. I've been so worried that the disk would be accidentally erased and everything I felt and thought during the time would be lost with it. And so one by one I am streamlining the design in a Word document, numbering the pages, creating headers, and printing them off. I looked into doing my own binding, but right now I'm going the easy route with a three-hole bunch and a few $4 binders from Walmart that resemble old leather books. Unfortunately the project has proven to be anything but easy, and it has been extremely time consuming. I'm finding that my 15-year-old self wasn't concerned with what my 25-year-old self would have to go through in order to do this. Most of the entries weren't even saved in a Word document but in HTML, which means white text on black backgrounds and strange page layouts that don't work well for copying and pasting into new documents. I'm also finding that I either didn't know about spell check or didn't care, because each newly pasted text comes with a rainbow of spelling and grammatical errors. I started editing and correcting the earlier entries from 1998, but soon realized that reading over every entry could take me months and I wanted to have this done in just a couple of days. My final plan isn't set in stone yet, but I dove in with grandiose plans and high expectations, so we'll see where it leads me.

While it may not have been the most interesting or disciplined writing, I was shocked to find just how much of it there was. At last count I had 114,145 words on 156 pages (I'm using a small font), and I haven't made it through an entire year. That's a lot of words for someone who doesn't speak up much.

I'm also learning through the little proofing that I have done that I haven't changed all that much. I'm still immature, confusing, and easily amused. I'm still fickle, self-conscious, and expect too much of myself. What has changed is my outlook on life. I no longer think I'm incapable of being married, because well, I am, and that it is possible to survive your teens because I'm still here. It's one of those If I Only Knew Then What I Know Now experiences that I have all too often anymore. I want to swaddle that poor girl writing all of those sad words and in the nicest, most heartfelt way, tell her to get over it, because life does not revolve around what your friends think of you--they'll be history in a few years anyway, and the world is not out to get you--it's all in your imagination. I couldn't sugarcoat it and say it would always be easy, or that she will always be happy, but the sun does come out again and she will be content. I am content.