Getting the Sad Out

I recognize that my Sophomore year of high school notes and diary entries would not be described as "fun," but I still feel the need to get all of the sad, drama-filled, angsty stuff out so you can really appreciate the funny, drama-filled angsty stuff that is yet to come. 

And so here are some of my favorite poems, self-reflections, and letters that I never sent.

Before you say anything - yes, I realize this is ruled paper and I wasn't 7 years old. However, sometimes when I couldn't sleep, I would just grab a piece of paper and write stuff down in the dark. It was always a surprise to see how it turned out in the morning!

...and?? We'll never know.

The (Incredibly Complicated) Game of Life

I may have a million diary entries and printed AOL conversations with Thomas, but I only have one note from him. ONE!

Here goes...

Comments:

• Navid didn't hit on me, but he did get me this birthday card:

• I have a picture of me in my Donato's uniform. In it, I am - for some inexplicable reason - pretending to sleep on a couch with my friend while holding a scary mask. This is what Friday nights looked like for me when I was grounded.

Oddly enough, Donato's rendezvous proved not to be enough for Thomas (or maybe my uniform scared him away!) and he broke up with me 7 days after my only note was written. For those of you with fast math skills, that is February 13th. The day before Valentine's Day. I'm fairly certain that it was the same day I had my Solon ID photo taken - because there's really no other excuse for my appearance.

A few doodles from the days following included some dark musings...

"If I cried a river, would you build a ship and sail to me? If I smiled through my pain, would it bring you closer?"

"Sometimes you can make sense of everyone else's life but your own. Because maybe you aren't supposed to understand everything that happens to you. Maybe you can't understand something so incredibly complicated as the game of life."

"The world won't make sense until you've given up on it. Time won't stand still until you're at your worst."

"Don't depend on anything or anyone. Everything can change in a second."

"There's never a perfect time for heartbreak. You'll never be ready for the end. The end won't wait for you, warn you, speak for you, or live for you. The end doesn't arrive until the last moment you feel safe."

Suffice it to say that I was pretty upset. I received a few notes attempting to cheer me up.

Comments:

• I wonder if she intentionally wrote this note on the "self-esteem" page of the planner to help me get the hint. 
• Apparently my mood swings weren't very subtle. 
• Hey, I love Boston Market!

Comments:

• Well of course I get it now, this isn't the end of the world. At least I knew I got dumped this time!
• I guess I really liked to eat if everyone is closing their notes to me with food references...

The cheering up didn't work right away, and I've got some of the archives from my attempts at being a writer/poet/songwriter to prove it. Stay tuned, but - ya know, I wouldn't depend on it.. or anyone, for that matter.

The Biggest MooStake

Despite executing my master plan to win Thomas back, Sophomore year was difficult for me - through nobody's fault but my own.

Details aren't necessary, so I'll just say that I made some foolish choices and ended up having an '02-'03 school year student ID from two different schools.

Following the foolish choices, my parents wrote me a letter. 

Despite being a hateful little teenager, I knew at the time that their punishment technique was pretty clever and impressive. They didn't choose to ground me for a period of time (although "for the rest of your life" would have been acceptable). Instead, they chose to suspend my social activities until I had done 30 hours of service. Thirty hours of good to make up for all of the bad. 

They put the responsibility back in my hands. So if I wanted to sit around whining about how life wasn't fair, I could. But it wouldn't get me any closer to the freedom that I thought I deserved at 15. I could have finished 30 hours of community service in two weeks if I had wanted, but instead I chose to pity myself and didn't go out for two months. 

I like to think that during those months I started to be a better person, maybe a little less selfish, maybe I'd like myself a bit more, but that's probably not true... that would come later. I did, however, realize that my parents weren't "out to get me" and they didn't want to ruin my life. I realized that they were pretty freaking smart and knew what they were doing with this whole raising-kids-thing. Through everything, they still loved me and wanted what was best for me. Even if I didn't know it at the time, in hindsight, I was (and am) extremely lucky for that.

To end on a bit of a lighter note... during my first week at school #2, I made the mistake of wearing a plaid shirt (no dress code!) and an upperclassman started mooing at me from down the hall. (Because I looked like a farmer?) I was so caught off guard that I didn't even have time to dodge her before she pushed me into a locker. Public school was rough. 

My friend Hannah drew me the following picture, being sure to include that upperclassman (Dana) on her way to milk the cows.




















You'll also notice the reference to Donato's, my first "official" employer, which will be addressed in a future post.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

The bad thing about going to a private school a half hour from your house is that someone else is doing the same thing, in the exact opposite direction. Thomas and I were a "geographically challenged" couple, living over an hour away from each other.

This made our budding romance quite difficult during the summer months, when we had to rely on parents/siblings/friendswhogottheirlicensesearly to transport us to see one another. 

We had quite a few bumps along the way, but by mid-August, I thought we were in the clear. Until...

I thought I had done a good job of easing Thomas's fears and that come school's start in just 10 days, everything would be fine because we were in LOVE! (Nevermind the fact that I declared my love for him and got jealous about this Greg fellow in the same diary entry.)

But then I started having weird conversations with some of our friends who were giving me their condolences on our failed relationship.

Uh.. what? Is it possible that I got dumped and didn't know it?

YES. Please prepare to watch me self destruct in an AOL conversation. You'll also learn some fun facts along the way. 

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My favorite parts of this conversation:

• How I said everything three times. "I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it." "Say it, say it, say it." "I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
• "But you went golfing with my dad."
• How despite the fact that I was being told, repeatedly, that we were not together and would not be... I kept trying to convince him to change his mind. I suppose I didn't consider that NOT acting like a mental person might have done the trick.

So, what's a girl to do when she discovers she's surprise broken up with by the person who days earlier confessed their love? She spends the next 240 hours laying in the sun, applying self-tanning lotion, whitening her teeth and getting highlights so that she can be in top shape for the first hallway sighting on the first day of 10th grade. 

The result:

Gotta love the uniform polo, hemp necklace, and platform Doc Martens.

And, I'm happy to say, it worked! The first day of school was rough and I ended up quoting Avril Lavigne lyrics at the end of it, but a mere two days later..

"I was getting...

This just goes to show that you CAN convince someone that they want to be your boyfriend, even if they try not to be. 

Unfortunately, this win gave me a false sense of power later on down the road. I was able to convince someone breaking up with me not to... but it backfired when he didn't talk to me for 3 days while out of town and came back with the girl he had been living with in hand. 

NOW I know, if someone breaks up with you.. maybe, just maybe, you let 'em go. One of those "he's not that into you" type of things, I guess.

Notes from My Bestie

No real theme. Just hilariousness. And pictures. Love infographics, if you will.

The "Look, Look Away" Game

Well, it's been a while since my last post. I'm sure a bunch of you have been on the edge of your seat, dying to know whether or not Thomas liked me back, or if I was just left hanging as you have been. The good news for you (all one of you) is that you're about to find out!


However, I'd like to address my posting absence. I think I got a little caught up in making each post unique and clever, like each one had to be a nice little story all packaged up. And that, is exhausting. Because, really, how many times can I say "god, I was SUCH an idiot" and make it sound different? What I've come to realize is that every post doesn't need a bunch of commentary from me, because my idiocy speaks for itself. 


So I'm going to shut up now and just let you see for yourself what a teenager in love sounds like, extremely loud and incredibly close.


A note to Rachel & Bean:

From the "novel" I started: