Welcome to Teen Week!
Growing up, I had upwards of 15 diaries—none of them finished, or even really given a chance to thrive. I’d buy one at the beginning of camp or if I was in a bookstore, sit on my bed, write six pages about how I wanted to be a writer, and then immediately forget about my diary and never return to it.
This specific diary—which my mom found in my diary drawer after I screamed at her via text, “Get me the teenage dirt!”—is from when I was 16 and spending the summer at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. I was one of the few dozen teens they allowed to spend time there with mostly college students and young adults, my first real interactions with Adult Life. If you’ve ever been a teen, you know how confusing it is to realize that you are actually lame because, as one of my few adult friends that summer told me, I had never had sex on ecstasy.
In the above entry, which is basically impossible to read, I discuss my impeccable outfit—“my knockoff juicy tube top and citizens [of Humanity] knee length denim skirt,” get mad at myself for being such a bad writer, discuss my two crushes—one lives in Greenwich, CT (I had kissed him at theater camp the summer before), and one is in DC (I will never kiss him, adult me knows)—and then I get self-conscious, which is insane:
Ok, I don’t read previous entries, so forgive me if I repeat [who forgive who???]. Who am I even talking to anyway? It’s not like this is going to be read ever, and even if it is, it’ll be by my mom who will half heartedly note its brilliance. I think my whole life is a quest for identity. [Ha ha, fuck] Well obviously it is. What else would it be? I try so hard to be special, different. I haven’t seen it.
Then I go on a weird “philosophical” tangent that I know I assumed was quite smart sounding when it is not, and then get very hyped up on ambition and wanting things I can’t have yet, and exhausted. So I make a list of very cheesy teenage things I want to achieve before I am 30. I am not yet 30, but am happy to report to my 16-year-old self that I have achieved all of the goals but “join Americorps,” “go to Israel,” and “have an internship in Spain or London,” though—just so Joanna knows—I have been to Spain (a country) and London (a city). Good for me.
Now, here are the most embarrassing two pages I’ve ever written:
I am posting this for love of Teen Week and Jezebel readers and I hope we can all respect the invasion of my own privacy enough never to speak about specifically the second half of the second page ever again.
Now, here’s news about my period.
God bless.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
