I skimmed my journal from 19 this morning. I could barely even read it. I literally looked away from some of it, quickly turning the page over. I thought to myself as I read my own handwriting, “no, don’t do that! NOOO!!!” But oh yes, I did it. I did all of that.
I seem to have so many regrets about my life back then, things I wish I had done so differently. Do not call that boy, do not ask him out (still the worst date of my entire life, ended with a limp handshake, and I still wouldn’t get over him). Please relax Jane, just be yourself. Do not worry what they think. They are just like you. They are not as cool as you think they are.
But I was so shy, I was cripplingly shy. I was paralyzed. I would sit there in the Smithfield Cafe every day, writing in this little notebook about what was going on around me, speculating, do they know my name? And then tearing myself to pieces. Merciless. I felt small and ugly and fake. This went on for a year.
But I really cared. I really cared about those people I knew, those people who barely remember me now. I rarely said a word. I didn’t think anything I felt or thought was worth saying out loud.
I wonder where it all came from. I guess I can chalk it up to my loneliness as a girl, feeling different and alienated because I was smart and naive and shy. Nothing really changed when I went to college, except my hormones kicked into high gear. I had a different crush every month, but I dated no one, I got close to no one, I kissed no one until summer’s end, and he was just passing through town. When a guy actually did pursue me, I ran as fast as I could in the other direction. It was so much safer to obsess over someone I would never have, or choose a long-distance “boyfriend,” than to find out what a real relationship was.
I didn’t find myself until I came here. And when I came here, the first thing I found was a punk scene full of genuinely nice people, people who embraced me and smiled at me. Or was it just that I was 21 and had done some growing up by then? Maybe both.
I lived in Olympia for twenty-seven months, and it haunts me to this day.
welcome to my world. my entries about sex are especially awful.
You know what’s funny? A virgin writing paragraph after paragraph about sex. Oh I had no idea. I think I was the biggest dork in the world. I was just trying. SO. HARD. to get these a-holes to like me. whhhyyyyy.
I know I was very similar! I think it is the age, it is such an insecure time. I look around at people that age now and cringe, I swear i can feel the insecurity vibrating off of them!