After Rae's Rounds

Talking to Rae about journaling and poetry and things of that nature, I looked at my journal's main page and was surprised, yet again, to see how many years of my life are represented on that little sidebar. You'd think those entries would be able to fill in all the things I've forgotten--arguments, field trips, books I read once but can't remember the title of--but I often find myself stymied by the purposeful lack of detail insisted upon by my teenage writer self.

For example, tonight Rae and I went over, once again, our mysterious departure from friendship during the latter half of sophomore year and then our equally-odd return to it that summer, without reaching any conclusion as to exactly why we stopped saying hi to each other in the halls. I can't find any answers in my journal entries from the period, just as I can't really pin down exactly what the problem was between me and Sara that led to me becoming friends with Meghan junior year. In the latter case, there are a couple of particularly angsty entries that I'm pretty certain were Sara-related, but I haven't the slightest idea what it's actually saying. I guess back then I didn't think I'd ever be using this journal for reference, just as an immediate outlet for the frustration and emotional overload of usual teenage crap.

In the end, we can probably chalk most of it up to being hormonal, self-obsessed teens who thought way too highly of their own maturity levels. I can't believe some of the things I thought were superlatively important back then. Of course, I'll probably be singing the same tune soon about the college years--heck, when I read things I wrote in freshman year, into sophomore, I DO cringe, most often at the punctuation and capitalization but also at the arguably ridiculous content. I noticed I used to use swears a lot more often, both in my writing and in my regular conversation, whereas now I try to avoid them. Once upon a time, I actually felt "rebellious" and "cool" for using those words, whereas now I look upon them as a lost opportunity to use, you know, real vocabulary. (The main exception to this progression would be the word "cunt," because despite its complete inappropriateness for use in any context I find myself to be inordinately fond of using "cuntiness" to describe the behavior of people around me, especially while I'm driving). But hey, I'm still growing.