''Their music made the blurring lines that separated hell from the hollow a lot less apparent. Their music filled my head with a particular kind of strange mercy; something music hasn't made me feel in a long, lone time. Every song made hell a lot less hot and heaven a lot more soothing. It made my fingertips jittery with pleasure, with every grunt and inflection and key change I felt every bristle and every pore on my body become soothed by familiarity..''
To celebrate me completing the last page of the journal I started on October 12, 2014, here are a few half-embarrassing entries ranging from the beginning of my sophomore year to the end of my junior year.
The past eight months have been the most peculiar months in my entire life. My friends shifted, my interests changed, and my priorities had been rearranged. I discovered things about myself I didn't know were hidden in me; my burning desire to succeed and perform, my emotional unavailability, and my tendency to slip into obsession as easily as it is to memorize stupid songs like Hey-fucking-Jude. I went in and out of obsessions faster than I had ever gone through in my entire life (to chronologically name a few: my West Coast/skater/FIDLAR phase, my Joanna Newsom phase [which I will never emerge out of], my Orwells phase, my teen movie phase, my Strokes phase, etc.), and I quickly learned how I can subconsciously prioritize my obsessions above anything else (this further ties in with emotional unavailability, but I'll sound like a psychopath if I explain that). I learned that I really fucking love being busy and stressed out (this isn't sarcasm; I've been on summer vacation for at least a month and the unproductivity and lack of deadlines I'm facing is driving me crazy), that my hard work is finally starting to pay off (I finally reached two goals I set out to achieve when I started high school--getting a 4.0 and directing my own play during my senior year), and that I need to live a little. I learned that I prefer ''the pining over the pursuit'' (the idealism of inexperience), that I need to constantly believe that what I do sucks so that it really doesn't suck (''Always think what you do sucks. Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact.''), and that I'm too hard on myself.
To celebrate me completing the last page of the journal I started on October 12, 2014, here are a few half-embarrassing entries ranging from the beginning of my sophomore year to the end of my junior year.
On attending my first party: ''The walk from the road to the house felt semi-cinematic; as we passed by strange parked cars that lined up in a symmetric brigade before the front lawn, I couldn't help but soak up the fraction of unfamiliar high school culture I was being exposed to: clusters of C-level students huddled in intimate circles as they pass around a bottle between them, pairs of buzzing fiends rolling joints on the soiled upholstery of vehicular middle consoles, groups of girls rushing through the driveway in pursuit of canned beer and places to hide their keys. It was an odd sight to see so many cliches play out right before my eyes--the whole scene appeared to be a novelty form of a microcosm of C-minus/my-parents-are-away/12:51 high school mediocrity I was previously unexposed to. The sight was strangely familiar and comforting (comforting is not the appropriate term to use; what I mean by ''comforting'' is the fact that it made my stomach flush with warmth for half-of-a-second...almost as if a feeling of nostalgia buzzed my senses and washed a feeling of belonging over me) and cinematic in the most alien way possible. Anyway, the party fucking sucked.''
On emotional unavailability--''It angers me that I haven't been able to feel butterflies in the pit of my stomach like I used to. I firmly believe that my tendency to obsess over intangible concepts--specifically, my own romanticizing of the idea of people versus their actual personality--has caused me to become desensitized to the desire of pursuing actual romantic interests.''
On Crooks Club: ''As he began to ramble again, I distinctly remember feeling so cathartic as I looked up at the black sky above me. Maybe it was the stillness of the environment (disturbed by his voice) or the bleak iciness of the night, or the sheer glory of the situation, but a sting of mysticism spread across my body; it felt closer to numbness and wonder than excitement or elation, closer to dizziness and awe than happiness. It was a weird, ethereal feeling. It felt like a planetary shift was occurring immediately above me--Venus or Jupiter going into retrograde, pulling our entire planet into a cyclone of change.''
An older entry. Being an insecure fifteen year old.
On shame--''The shame I feel is unexplainable. It churns my stomach thinking about it. I know it is all in my head, and that I can stop it by pushing it out, but this mentality has been in grained into my head for years and years. I don't think this shame has been necessarily pushed down upon me by my upbringing (I cannot pinpoint any specific moment when I was told that I should suppress teenage libido or that it is immoral--besides the self-preservation of innocence), but rather my own concern.''
On catharsis--''On the first night of summer we were returning back from seeing a movie around nine at night, and I suggested Gabi to play songs off of Is This It on the ride back to my house. Although the night was humid and my skin was flushed from the heat, we rolled down my windows and drove under lamplights blasting Hard to Explain on the fullest volume. It was a moment of catharsis--the memory is stored in my brain nxt to the warm, sticky feeling you get whenever a rain shower clashes with a sunset and the daylight in your room is dissolved by a yellow sheen. It is a warm memory. A sweet delusion.''
One of my oldest entries.
I found these postcards (the postcard on the right is from 1953 and the opposing one is from 1939) in a consignment shop in downtown Sanford. Although memorabilia from the early 30's/40's/50's is cheap and abundant, I thought they were an interesting novelty to have in my possession.
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