Life has been depressing since losing my twins. I am only eating hot dogs and Oreos because I have no appetite. (I did force myself to eat salmon and broccoli last night for dinner.) I have watched a lot of TV shows and movies, read Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel.
I lay around reading my old journals most of the day because they wrap me in the soft arms of memory and feel like a safe place to hide.
I journal-ed from 7th grade until the end of my senior year and I wrote about everything from my feelings, my crushes, school, gossip and mostly giving myself affirmation that I was pretty, smart and talented. I have found these journals to be the most entertaining thing. If you are young, journal your life. All of my friends that I have shared my journals with have said they wished that they also recorded their feelings, thoughts and actions back then.
I have found that hiding in my journals have been a great comfort, I have laughed, cried, smiled and been incredibly embarrassed by who I was in those years. It's amazing how such a short sentence can bring me back to a memory that I had completely forgotten.
There is such a comfort in seeing how far I have come from those days. It is lovely to see the feelings that I had. Those feelings felt like the end of the world then and now I see that they didn't matter then and really don't matter now.
My 7th grade year when I started my journal-ing I dedicated the journals to Anne Frank because I decided that I would journal after reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. In 7th grade I got my first period, I never would have guessed I was so scared about it if I had not wrote about the fear. I wrote that I was scared to go anywhere again because everyone would be able to tell I was on my period. Funny how 15 years later I never think about if anyone would be able to tell that I am on my period. I also feel so terrible for my 7th grade crush because everyday I found a way to get his attention, I was so annoying.
It is so funny to see that when I was a sophomore in high school I counted how many days I had a crush. I also, surely like many other girls, practiced walking like a model every day and I gave myself updates on how talented I was becoming. My 5'2" self, while doing years of modeling, never did master a runway.
My friends and I were witty and I love the things that I said and thought about back then because as an adult you just don't find the time and space to think so in depth about such silly things. In my sophomore year I told a friend of mine that my foreign exchange student at the time had the hotts for him by telling him "She is back in Panama, where the weather is hot and she wants you to know that you are as hot as the weather"
I also had no life when I was a sophomore in high school so my journal just chronicled other people's relationships. I wrote a lot about who is dating and when they first kissed and when they broke up.
I was a funny girl, I think I carry a lot of the same personality traits that I had in all stages of my life. My life turned out similar to how I hoped or thought it would. As a young girl I had far out dreams, but as time went on I noticed that I was sick very often and that one of the things that ended up mattering the most to me was comfort. So I have built the most comfortable life that I could.
Do any of you have old journals from when you were young? Have you heard of Mortified? It is one of my favorite podcasts that looks back at journals and diaries of teenagers now in adulthood, it is very funny and lighthearted. If you haven't checked it out you should!
The attached picture is only two of the 20+ journals that I am going back through, I will eventually post pictures of all of them and share memories from each stage of my adolescence.
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