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.)

guts

I've been meaning to do this for awhile. Write, I mean.

You know that feeling where you're standing at the edge of the pool? The concrete is hot and wet and steamy under your heels, but your toes feel unsure of themselves, curled around bright blue tiles. 

There's water dripping from your suit because the shallow end is safe and you've already made friends with it. It's got limits, the shallow end, and you have complete control over whether or not the water goes near your eyeballs. Boun-da-ries, shallow end. Con-trol. Fake diamond earring water drops fall from your earlobes, too, because you were flirting your ears with the shallow end and got them wet, pretending like eyeballs might be happening today, but they didn't (of course) because you're not like that. And neither is the shallow end, no matter what the other kids are doing in it.

But then you got out because you have freakishly burnable skin and your mom makes you put on more sunscreen several times, and now you are dripping and you want to get back in so that the Coppertone smell will go away, and Dad yells, "Hey, Annie! Jump in!" before you can go back to the zero-depth place.

And oh-dear-goodness, he's in the deep end. The over HIS head deep end. Like some sort of crazy, danger-obsessed man. Does he realize how tall he is? How tall this makes the pool? How many tiny yous would have to drown so that the one remaining you could stand on their shoulders and climb out? How you and the water and the eyeballs are just not happening today?

But dads are persuasive, and you find yourself standing there, breathing the last breaths you might ever take, and he's just smiling, reaching up, his feet treading water. "I'll catch you!"

He's insane. 

You hesitate. You glance at the shallow end. Boun-da-ries. You glance at Mom on a pool chair. Con-trol.

"C'mon, Annie. Jump in!"

You scream when your feet hit the water, when you realize what you've done and you wish with all your heart and breath and brain that you could rewind about five seconds of your life. Sorry, eyeballs. Sorry, breathing. I didn't mean it. Really, I didn't. I loved you. I loved you so much, eyeballs.

And Dad catches you, and it feels sort of safe because he is Dad and he is tall and strong and can swim, and it also feels terrifying because he is insane. And you have water in your eyeballs and they sting angrily, victims of your wild lapse of boun-da-ries, and Dad's laughing and asking if it was fun, and you sort of want to say "yeah" because well, it was, but you also want to get the hell out of the pool and go sit with Mom forever.

But you do it again. 

So, yeah, that feeling? This. Guts.

Many, many people have been encouraging me to do this and plunge in, and I am vastly thankful for all of you, even though I've just insinuated that you're all insane (I'm standing by that, with love).

I don't really know what I'm doing here, or what I'm going to write about. I could bore you with the woes of my daily life, or tell you the poem I wrote when my brother left his dishes to crust over in the sink for the bajillionth time (woe #1). I could write more things like this and give you a vague impression of what a terrifyingly weird kid I was. I could regale you with the stories that float around in my head, like the cloud palace of the Nimmos or the sad fate of the man who was born with all of his magic in his left ear.

I could rant about things that get my goat, like when people ignore the people who need them, or when young adult fiction writers collectively decide that it is impossible for an already-confident young woman to "come of age" and not spend the first chapter/first half/first book dithering about her lack of self-esteem/purpose/boyfriend. I could write random little observations about how bare oak branches against a purpled sky make my heart fly out of my chest for no reason, or how sometimes love is more about dirt-under-fingernails than butterflies-in-stomachs.

I will probably do all of those things in some shape, though I promise nothing. I can promise that they won't all be this long or this rambly. But I am tired, and I have been glancing at the shallow end for the last hour. So I'm going to do a crazy, gutsy thing and click publish.

In about two minutes, there will be screaming.

Catch me?