The brutal cold of the last week has given me ample time to complete projects around the house. Three snow days called within the first seven meeting days of the semester should have been a gift of deep cleaning, touching up paint, and all the other little domestic duties I slough off during busier days. Friends: I did very little.
I read, I watched The Americans–yes, yes, a party I’m decidedly late to–and took in three awards shows and pieces of several football games. In a word: I rested.
Yesterday, though, I decided to organize all my journals, starting with the ones from the spring of my sophomore year of high school (1991). I made it midway through the journal from 1995-1998 and had to stop. I was reading about someone I didn’t know, and the errand felt intrusive.
In my memory, I’m a smart, put together teen with little time for the ridiculousness of high school dating and other such dramas. I had good friends, I dated two boys while in high school (Stephan, a blonde swimmer from another school who spent $5 to attend Salina’s equivalent of a rave for five minutes to break up with me) and Marty, a boy I was friends with most of high school until we dated and broke up and well, that was that. They were both funny and smart, and those–as I recall–were big requirements to date me.
The girl in my journal pages had no such high standards. She repeatedly writes that she is lonely and wishes, above all else, that someone would see her and love her for who she is. In fact, the word “lonely” probably appears more than any other word. I’ve read through 2001 now–the latter journal entries are less frequent, more peppered with bad poetry including magnetic poems from an old refrigerator set that moved far too often with me for several years. In all of those journals, I am absolutely fraught with the question: where is my person?
In 1999 I made a list: sense of humor, honest, compassionate, intelligent, reader (good things, not just that sci-fi shit), and artistic in some way. Today I told Michael today that he sure took his precious time arriving, but he certainly ticks every box.
I also wrote about wanting to lose weight. On my first driver’s license, I lied about what I weighed. It reads: 135, a weight I’m fairly certain I haven’t weighed since junior high school. And the entries are filled with plans: work out more, eat better. Lose fifteen, no, lose 25, no lose 50 pounds. What an absolute waste of time to have cared that much about something that has so little to do with who I am.
For the last 24 hours or so, I’ve been re-examining the picture I had of myself prior to reading these journals. In some cases, I’m still the same person, particularly when it comes to music. I recorded that I first bought these tapes– Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails and Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Pale at the Hutchinson Mall on September 7, 1992. In January of 1993, I bought Big Audio Dynamite’s The Globe (also on tape). As a 14th birthday gift, I took Brandon to see The Jayhawks and The Black Crowes at the Salina Bicentennial Center on February 23, 1993. July 20, 1994: I saw the Indigo Girls play in KC. May 1995: I saw R.E.M. at Sandstone. Six weeks later, I went back there to see Lollapalooza. In August of 1995, at the same venue, I saw the Cranberries and the aforementioned Toad.
I’m still that girl. I see fewer shows, but there are demarcation lines across my life related to music.
Some inside covers of the journals are covered in quotations I loved, proof that words have always mattered to me.
The only thing that really shifted my focus is my total lack of awareness that I put so much stock in someone putting stock in me. I was hungry for love in a way that, now, feels a bit sad, but at the time was probably very on brand for 15-22.
The years I spent in Florida with a boyfriend seven years my senior were hard to read about. I think he believed he cared about me, and I certainly thought I loved him, but reading those private thoughts, it’s pretty clear that was a bad situation from the beginning. Ladies, if he keeps in touch with all of his ex-girlfriends and repeatedly says he doesn’t trust you though you’ve done nothing wrong, run for the monster trucking hills. I learned a lot from that relationship, most importantly that I wanted to finish school and did not want to be someone’s wife and someone else’s mother at the age of 21. But, in hindsight, it should have been over far far sooner than it was.
Reading back through the girl I used to be, I’m sad for her and proud of her. I don’t think Shannon at 22 would have ever imagined, 25 years later, that she’d have this life, this love, this faith that no matter what happens, she is okay. I’d like to go back and tell her, but then again, whose to say I would be me, today, if she hadn’t been the absolute mess she was?
Finally, I’m so thankful this generation has language and less stigma to talk about how they feel. It’s pretty clear that I was suffering “situational depression”–a term I didn’t know existed until I divorced in 2010 and began to see a therapist (thanks, Mama–best gift ever). I learned that my way of processing change was unhealthy–I hope young people today learn that well before their thirties.
A few friends reached out about my journal reading as I posted a few of the worst gems on social media. One told me to give myself a break because we were “fifteen year old badasses”, another said it’s good to read these things but putting a sticky note with a content warning for future reading isn’t a bad idea, and another said she burned all her old journal pages just last year. However you choose to reconcile who you are today with who you were, I hope you have friends like these to help you through it.
Learn to love yourself at every age, if you can; I’m pretty sure it’s the only way we survive this ride with any kind of joy at all.
Shannon Carriger 