andcuriouser
Active Member
Basically, these are parts of my "diary" (I refer to it as a notebook) from high school. I started it in my sophomore year, and it lasted me until early college.
I'd scan the pages from this notebook (as they are fully illustrated) but that would take far too long.
This particular notebook had a title, "sometimes we grow up". The fact that I never date anything really screws up the chronological order of these things, as everything was copied into the book in random order. "sometimes we grow up" is possibly my favourite notebook to read back on.
Since I'm doing it right now anyway, I figure I'll throw some entries up in here. This isn't traditional diary format or anything. I'm not that organized. I range from completely coherant to complete babbling. This was my life at one point:
----------------------------------------
i'm not responsible for anything i've done.
it's just the way you keep carrying on,
i feel that it's impossible to do anything.
it's a shape that moves with the passing cars, always
just out of reach.
and you barely care that what i'm searching for might not even be there, it's just going to be a sort of bad memory, the kind we forget about at the dinner table, because you don't like to think of the implications of what this could mean.
so i keep losing my sleep, trying to make the pieces fit without scotch tape, nothing even temporary to soothe my spinning brain, or to keep it all from spilling out
onto the page.
and i guess i could try to chase it with the tip of my pen, but it will never fall behind, because you keep picking up everything it could trip on, so that when i blink,
it's gone.
and you've got an awful lot
of explaining to do.
-----------------------------------
This might be the only one I can assume a date for: mid-November of my sophomore year of high school. My best friend died of bone cancer on the 10th, and this was written in response to that.
i don't know why we did it, but when we were standing in awe in the corner of the room, the white light pouring over everything made it seem beautiful. she had painted these balloons on the wall, curling white paint lines for string and stark black for the rubber. i thought it was art, but when the alarm clock rang and she reached out to touch me, she broke my heart and said that it was just a stupid fucking picture that couldn't stop a war. i tried to believe her when she told me that nothing could be sincere, but you know what? i don't think i've ever seen someone so honest about anything before. her hair was soft, and we inhaled our conscience and then left with the door standing ajar. the streets were cold and white, and our nosebleeds made our fingers red like cherry juice, but there was nowhere else to go but the streets of ottawa. she had a combination lock hooked to her jeans, the same one i used on that swimming pool locker to keep all my shit safe from pool patrons. what the hell would they steal anway? we went through the snow until we found bare pavement. she was sure, and i doubted but followed anyway. i missed the balloons, how they would make her lips look less blue, but mine weren't even purple. she found me a room, and then left me to rot. i crowded near the door to wait and tried to calm down. but nothing is more counter-productive than waiting. i wanted to start another revolution: let's make something.
i waited. i became blank like the snow outside the window, the few spaces where no one had bled or pissed out the alcohol they coated their stomachs with like winter jackets. she was never going to come back, and i couldn't see out the window after a while. i cried when i thought of her, and the tears would freeze to my cheeks like diamonds, and we could've made wedding rings. i got a paper cut from the fucking envelope. i just added to the blood on the snow.
she never mailed me back, but her parents sent me a letter from florida that said, "she'd want you to know that she's gone home. god will take care of her better than you could."
--------------------------------------
sometimes i start breathing so fast that it hurts, and i'm not sure how to calm down or make myself stop. sometimes it hurts so much that i decide it would be better to just stop altogether. so i cover my nose and my mouth and just. stop. breathing.
they're lying when they say that drowning is a peaceful way to die. there is no way. it would be terrifying. just imagine it. what would your thoughts be as you die? i'll bet you they'd be about oxygen. and that's it. oxygen, and breath, and air and how badly you want it to fill your lungs. it's consuming. i stop feeling sorry for myself and instead i just think about air.
but then i let go and it all comes rushing back in and even though my chest is heaving for different reasons, that sadness is still there all the same.
--------------------------------------
there's a boy. and i suppose i loved him at some point, but now there's only an echo. barely that. a murmur. a susurration. i've slept with this boy twice. once because i was curious, and once because i wanted something. i didn't even get what i wanted, and both times i was just left with this heavy guilt and awkwardness. i need space. we are strange. we've grown up to different places. i never want to see him again. i wish he would send me a letter someday, maybe in fifty years. "hope you are having a nice life. i am too." i don't know what to do when something that has disappeared for me hasn't done the same for him. these feelings are supposed to be mutual.
----------------------------------------
i am so tired, but my brain won't let me sleep. it is just going haywire, and i can think about sleep. but it doesn't happen. i can't remember the last time i dreamed. i want to dream.
i think i need to move on. but it's just so damn hard to ignore things and carry on.
I WISH I WERE A DINOSAUR AND COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THAT I AM DOOMED TO DIE OF A METEOR OR CLIMATE SHIFT OR OTHER UNDETERMINED CAUSE.
------------------------------------------
to my dearest faggot, with your cracked lips and your skinned knees and your curly hair and naivete, and your guilt and your anxiety:
STOP. I AM VERY TIRED OF YOUR STRESSING OVER THINGS YOU HAVE NO HOPE OF CHANGING.
not to sound selfish (which means that this is partly selfish), i hope you do move to vancouver, because i think caila might love you better than i can. i don't think i have as much patience for you as i used to, and maybe that's sad, but maybe it's natural.
with all the love for you i still have,
leland.
---------------------------------------------
i should probably start off by saying that i really don't like going to sleep. i hate it almost as much as i hate waking up. and to tell you the truth, there is nothing i hate more than sunday nights, because i have done nothing constructive all day and have nothing to look forward to, except for school and unfinished homework. i haven't even practiced my music summative. but i don't mind. it's sunday, and i don't care.
my dad is attempting to build a bathroom and i felt very much like a little kid again today, following my dad around home depot and ignoring my mom. i was even wearing a sweater like the ones i used to, and sneakers. the only thing that ruined my fantasy was that there was a very attractive and overenthusiastic rona employee, and i probably wouldn't have noticed that sort of thing when i was very small.
i don't mourn growing up; i just wish i could care less about other people and more about lego and lakewater.
incidentally, we didn't buy anything from home depot. or rona. i was kind of looking forward to sharing the backseat with a brand new shower, but the overenthusiastic and very attractive rona employee was also very honest, and my dad figured it would be too much work to do what he originally intended. so we moved on, and i felt kind of silly, because i was in a sweater and sneakers and stared at the floor, and the attractive and overenthusiastic rona employee probably thinks i am mute, which i am not. i'm just shy and don't have very good voice projection.
i think i need to realize that no one is pressuring me to be spectacular but me. i can say a word so sincerely, but that doesn't really make it so. i just want to be honest. i want to never lie. so i guess i tell the truth, but i just don't give all the particulars.
---------------------------------
i feel guilty when i am legitimately upset. i think ian is annoyed with me because i am needy and cried on his shoulder last night and didn't know how to tell him that sometimes i feel sad and need someone to tell me something profound.
oh ian, my wonderful, stressing, amazing faggot. sometimes i don't know how to deal with you when you don't want to deal with me. you are so wrapped up in your own problems and your stresses and your body that you don't realize that sometimes people are upset and want your support. oh you beautiful fag, why can't you see past your own life? i wish it were you to help me. oh my wonderful faggot, why can't you settle your mind and worry about me for a while? i'm too damn tired to do it for you.
Sorry for the length. I could be boring.
I'd scan the pages from this notebook (as they are fully illustrated) but that would take far too long.
This particular notebook had a title, "sometimes we grow up". The fact that I never date anything really screws up the chronological order of these things, as everything was copied into the book in random order. "sometimes we grow up" is possibly my favourite notebook to read back on.
Since I'm doing it right now anyway, I figure I'll throw some entries up in here. This isn't traditional diary format or anything. I'm not that organized. I range from completely coherant to complete babbling. This was my life at one point:
----------------------------------------
i'm not responsible for anything i've done.
it's just the way you keep carrying on,
i feel that it's impossible to do anything.
it's a shape that moves with the passing cars, always
just out of reach.
and you barely care that what i'm searching for might not even be there, it's just going to be a sort of bad memory, the kind we forget about at the dinner table, because you don't like to think of the implications of what this could mean.
so i keep losing my sleep, trying to make the pieces fit without scotch tape, nothing even temporary to soothe my spinning brain, or to keep it all from spilling out
onto the page.
and i guess i could try to chase it with the tip of my pen, but it will never fall behind, because you keep picking up everything it could trip on, so that when i blink,
it's gone.
and you've got an awful lot
of explaining to do.
-----------------------------------
This might be the only one I can assume a date for: mid-November of my sophomore year of high school. My best friend died of bone cancer on the 10th, and this was written in response to that.
i don't know why we did it, but when we were standing in awe in the corner of the room, the white light pouring over everything made it seem beautiful. she had painted these balloons on the wall, curling white paint lines for string and stark black for the rubber. i thought it was art, but when the alarm clock rang and she reached out to touch me, she broke my heart and said that it was just a stupid fucking picture that couldn't stop a war. i tried to believe her when she told me that nothing could be sincere, but you know what? i don't think i've ever seen someone so honest about anything before. her hair was soft, and we inhaled our conscience and then left with the door standing ajar. the streets were cold and white, and our nosebleeds made our fingers red like cherry juice, but there was nowhere else to go but the streets of ottawa. she had a combination lock hooked to her jeans, the same one i used on that swimming pool locker to keep all my shit safe from pool patrons. what the hell would they steal anway? we went through the snow until we found bare pavement. she was sure, and i doubted but followed anyway. i missed the balloons, how they would make her lips look less blue, but mine weren't even purple. she found me a room, and then left me to rot. i crowded near the door to wait and tried to calm down. but nothing is more counter-productive than waiting. i wanted to start another revolution: let's make something.
i waited. i became blank like the snow outside the window, the few spaces where no one had bled or pissed out the alcohol they coated their stomachs with like winter jackets. she was never going to come back, and i couldn't see out the window after a while. i cried when i thought of her, and the tears would freeze to my cheeks like diamonds, and we could've made wedding rings. i got a paper cut from the fucking envelope. i just added to the blood on the snow.
she never mailed me back, but her parents sent me a letter from florida that said, "she'd want you to know that she's gone home. god will take care of her better than you could."
--------------------------------------
sometimes i start breathing so fast that it hurts, and i'm not sure how to calm down or make myself stop. sometimes it hurts so much that i decide it would be better to just stop altogether. so i cover my nose and my mouth and just. stop. breathing.
they're lying when they say that drowning is a peaceful way to die. there is no way. it would be terrifying. just imagine it. what would your thoughts be as you die? i'll bet you they'd be about oxygen. and that's it. oxygen, and breath, and air and how badly you want it to fill your lungs. it's consuming. i stop feeling sorry for myself and instead i just think about air.
but then i let go and it all comes rushing back in and even though my chest is heaving for different reasons, that sadness is still there all the same.
--------------------------------------
there's a boy. and i suppose i loved him at some point, but now there's only an echo. barely that. a murmur. a susurration. i've slept with this boy twice. once because i was curious, and once because i wanted something. i didn't even get what i wanted, and both times i was just left with this heavy guilt and awkwardness. i need space. we are strange. we've grown up to different places. i never want to see him again. i wish he would send me a letter someday, maybe in fifty years. "hope you are having a nice life. i am too." i don't know what to do when something that has disappeared for me hasn't done the same for him. these feelings are supposed to be mutual.
----------------------------------------
i am so tired, but my brain won't let me sleep. it is just going haywire, and i can think about sleep. but it doesn't happen. i can't remember the last time i dreamed. i want to dream.
i think i need to move on. but it's just so damn hard to ignore things and carry on.
I WISH I WERE A DINOSAUR AND COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THAT I AM DOOMED TO DIE OF A METEOR OR CLIMATE SHIFT OR OTHER UNDETERMINED CAUSE.
------------------------------------------
to my dearest faggot, with your cracked lips and your skinned knees and your curly hair and naivete, and your guilt and your anxiety:
STOP. I AM VERY TIRED OF YOUR STRESSING OVER THINGS YOU HAVE NO HOPE OF CHANGING.
not to sound selfish (which means that this is partly selfish), i hope you do move to vancouver, because i think caila might love you better than i can. i don't think i have as much patience for you as i used to, and maybe that's sad, but maybe it's natural.
with all the love for you i still have,
leland.
---------------------------------------------
i should probably start off by saying that i really don't like going to sleep. i hate it almost as much as i hate waking up. and to tell you the truth, there is nothing i hate more than sunday nights, because i have done nothing constructive all day and have nothing to look forward to, except for school and unfinished homework. i haven't even practiced my music summative. but i don't mind. it's sunday, and i don't care.
my dad is attempting to build a bathroom and i felt very much like a little kid again today, following my dad around home depot and ignoring my mom. i was even wearing a sweater like the ones i used to, and sneakers. the only thing that ruined my fantasy was that there was a very attractive and overenthusiastic rona employee, and i probably wouldn't have noticed that sort of thing when i was very small.
i don't mourn growing up; i just wish i could care less about other people and more about lego and lakewater.
incidentally, we didn't buy anything from home depot. or rona. i was kind of looking forward to sharing the backseat with a brand new shower, but the overenthusiastic and very attractive rona employee was also very honest, and my dad figured it would be too much work to do what he originally intended. so we moved on, and i felt kind of silly, because i was in a sweater and sneakers and stared at the floor, and the attractive and overenthusiastic rona employee probably thinks i am mute, which i am not. i'm just shy and don't have very good voice projection.
i think i need to realize that no one is pressuring me to be spectacular but me. i can say a word so sincerely, but that doesn't really make it so. i just want to be honest. i want to never lie. so i guess i tell the truth, but i just don't give all the particulars.
---------------------------------
i feel guilty when i am legitimately upset. i think ian is annoyed with me because i am needy and cried on his shoulder last night and didn't know how to tell him that sometimes i feel sad and need someone to tell me something profound.
oh ian, my wonderful, stressing, amazing faggot. sometimes i don't know how to deal with you when you don't want to deal with me. you are so wrapped up in your own problems and your stresses and your body that you don't realize that sometimes people are upset and want your support. oh you beautiful fag, why can't you see past your own life? i wish it were you to help me. oh my wonderful faggot, why can't you settle your mind and worry about me for a while? i'm too damn tired to do it for you.
Sorry for the length. I could be boring.
