Welcome to My High School LiveJournal

The cow as white as milk,
the cape as red as blood,
the hair as yellow as corn,
the slipper as pure as gold.

Were We Wild And Young?

When we were 16, my friend wrote on her LiveJournal, "I shouldn't be sad. My boyfriend's awesome and the Sox are winning." I doubt she remembers the day or why she was blue. The journal has been deleted, but that line has always stuck with me. And perhaps high schoolers can be myopic and immature, but sometimes they're more keen than any of us could dream to be.

I don't remember, were we wild and young?

All that's faded into memory.

I feel like somebody I don't know.

Are we really who we used to be?

Am I really who I was?

The lights will draw you in,

and the dark will bring you down.

And the night will break your heart

only if you're lucky now.

High and Dry

Writing a play for high school girls. I have massive writer’s block, which is odd for me. But also, I’m just really grossly burnt out. I so don’t deserve to be. I just had fall break. This morning Ro stopped at home for a mid-morning cig and we sat on the back porch, her in work clothes, me in an over-sized Cosby sweater. It was like a game—“What stresses you out? This is what stresses me out.” And then we died laughing because we’re 20somethings just hanging out at 10 AM on a Thursday. How bad could it be? I mean, we recognized that, but then we paused, and all the grey stuff still hung over.

So, this writer’s block. High school girls. I plunged into some prime material: my old LiveJournal. It was just so sad. I mean, even when I was happy, it was still sad. This puddle of gloom, of “What will happen after this? This is all so fleeting.” College had umbrella’d since I was twelve. I clicked through other friends’ journals. None updated since 2006, 7. These kids stuck in cyberspace. And they were sad. So sad. Just like me! Girls I loved, girls I didn’t, girls I envied, girls who envied me. None of us were that different. But in each piddly little entry was a kind of hope. A hope that the writer was young and knew more was to come. Twinge of nostalgia for high school sure to end, but a feeling of relief that soon the confusion was over, the sad sack days were numbered.

Honestly, I liked high school, but I also grew up surrounded by TV and movies assuring me that growing up is supposed to feel like hell. At times it did, but that was apparently norms. College is more the mystery. Everyone I know went through some form of depression in college. But it wasn’t cute anymore. It's just wrong. "No one is supposed to feel this way anymore," you think. But deep down you know everybody does and this time it never ends.

Lena Dunham said in an interview last year that she created Girls to explore just what is wrong with youth culture. No one ever says they are happy when asked sincerely. For a while I took this as a challenge to be genuinely happy, and I think I was. I think I am. But it’s weird that the word “think” is in there.

High School Friendships

High school relationships get a really bad rap--like "dramatic" or whatevs. But, honestly, I never experienced much of that. SVC--one of my prized HS pals--just got an iPhone, so we've been Emojiing all day. Duh. We've been talking about how we met, and I just want to give a shout out to how spontaneous friendships can be in high school, and how truly great that is.

HOW WE BECAME FRIENDS:

-We had English class together, and one day everyone was supposed to be silently reading The Scarlet Letter. We weren't. We were both looking around the classroom, and then at each other.
-I used to mismatch my shoes in HS. At first it was an accident, and then I thought it was cool. Trendsetter, what? SVC was the only person who noticed.
-He remembers some time when the teacher turned her back, and I flicked him off. I have no recollection of this, but that doesn't mean I don't think it happened.
-We started saying "hi" in the parking lot before school.
-He was a captain on the debate team, so his AIM was on a whiteboard in the team room. I copied it in my planner, and we would IM at night.
-We read each other's Livejournals.
-We decided to hang out some Friday. He got my number, called me, and we ended up watching Biodome with a bunch of people.

And then we became best friends. What!? But, we did.

SINCE BECOMING FRIENDS:

-We helped each other establish academic ideas.
-We traveled to Scotland.
-We've coached each other through break-ups and other crisis, near and far.
-We listen to and respect each other's opinions.

Some real, adult, solid friendship-type ish, y'all. Based on goofing off in class and a Pauly Shore movie. Friendship can be anywhere.


This is us at the first gathering of HS pals after we'd been exposed to college.

Hot Dog!

Jamin: OUCH!
Me: Are you okay?
Jamin: OUCH! I'm making a hot dog. I know. You're offended. OUCH! This hot dog is HOT!

Today was a super lazy day here at Camp S______. Some of the days activities include, but are not limited to: finding my old LiveJournal and then tinkering around LJ seeing if people from HS ever updated theirs again, watching three episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, and falling asleep while playing a game on my phone.

Probs what's sadder than my "lazy activities" are my "productive activities": scrapbooked four pages, wrote a poem, did a Jillian Michaels workout (which invokes doing super easy looking exercises like lifting one foot or something but make me sweat like a horse), and sat quietly.

Hooray for summer!