why i don't journal

This 1) took forever and 2) is too long and 3) I'm going to try not to care about 1&2, because 2 was causing 1 and I'm mad at them both. Jerks.

Okay, here goes:

I've started about a million blogs, so I don't know why this one is freaking me out so badly. Maybe because I've never kept a blog very well. Or a journal. No, no. That is a lie. I once kept a journal very, very well: I carefully documented the days between my twelfth and thirteenth birthdays in a diary.

When I was twelve, I tried with all my might to have a proper rebellion and instead had the third-most horrid year of my life. It was so awful that even now—fourteen years, puberty, and one fully-developed frontal lobe later—I still feel deep sympathy for all girls who go through the gross injustice of being twelve. Or eleven, or thirteen, or whenever they first decide they are Much Maligned. (Of course, the frontal lobe also gives me a lot of sympathy for the parents of those girls. I'm still sorry, guys. I didn't mean any of it.)

But I'm also really glad that most of my teenage angst rampaged around my brain when the most dramatic thing I knew how to do was say wildly sarcastic things to my mom, storm up the stairs, slam my door as dramatically as possible, and pour my troubles into a rose-covered book with a lock.

And, oh, I reveled in that angst.

I'd sob dramatically into my pillow. Sometimes I'd even cry on the pages a little, just to get my writing to smear a bit, so that my future biographers would understand that I was Much Maligned as a young girl. Unfortunately, gel pens were huge in the nineties, and they were crap at smearing.

One day, my dad made me sit at the dinner table until I finished a plate of fish. Injustice! Didn't he know that I was a mature twelve-year-old? I'd eaten my "no-thank-you" portion already.

Much Maligned, I ate that fish with dramatic choking, seasoning it with my tears. Then I ran up the stairs, dove onto my bed, and whipped out my best non-gel pen. There's a gigantic, loopy scrawl in the diary that day, about two-thirds of the way through the year: "I absolutely ABHOR my father today. He has not a scrap of compassion for the trials I face."

I should probably mention that I was really into historical fiction back then, and that my angst played out very nicely when I narrated it as though I was trying to be a lady in the midst of pillaging. I silently imagined my future biographers' remarks about the poise and extensive vocabulary I'd developed at such a tender age.

Then I turned thirteen, calmed down a bit, and quit journaling. I've over-analyzed this and decided that I do not journal because writing is boring when only I and the future biographers will read it. These days, my writing includes Facebook statuses and poems sent to trusted friends. My mom gets ridiculously long emails from me about tea and books and front porches. And I like writing all those things.


I suppose that at the very least, one person will read this (hi mom!), and I'll hop around gleefully and send you imaginary hugs of ecstatic thanks (thanks!). At the very greatest, maybe I'll find out that this is The Best, and I will love writing all the things, and many people will discover what a weird twelve-year-old I was. There is no worst, so I will publish. ;)

(PS - I will probably imagine that I am Much Maligned at some point in the future, because sometimes being Much Maligned is just deliciously fulfilling. If you decide to join me and read this blog, you can't say I didn't warn you about the historical fiction thing.)