molly(3)

I’m thankful that last night, as L and I were each looking through old photos, he went to find an old blog he used to write (that used to be regularly featured on Yahoo’s humor sites) and I tried to dig up my old Livejournal and Xanga and Myspace. I’m thankful that I found my Livejournal first — I'm thankful that a while back I managed to hack into an old email, so had the secondary source I needed to retrieve a lost password. I’m thankful that though I was initially incredibly embarrassed, and shielded it from L’s sight so he couldn’t see my username (the page is actually still live), as I reread it I remembered my distance from it, and the differences between me now and my sixteen-year-old self, and I’m thankful that I felt softer toward it. I’m thankful to feel protective of past-me, who was incredibly harsh toward herself.

I’m thankful to remember the ongoing identity crisis I experienced from seventh grade through college in rereading things I wrote on my Livejournal, like:

"But even if I figure myself out on paper, my concern is in interaction with other people. You know how you can look at some people and kind of pin down their personality, their vibe, in your mind? Obviously no one’s 100% predictable, but with many people, you can pick up the general gist, and think “Oh, they’re this kind of person” – whether you do it consciously or subconsciously. Well, I can’t do that with myself. I don’t know if that’s normal or not, and I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing – but I wish I were one of those people who has a personality that, whether or not it in itself stands out, is solid and you can feel like you do know that person, once you get close to them. However, even with my closest friends, I sometimes feel like there are parts of me they don’t know. Is that normal? Is it normal to feel so unsure? Is it normal to be so unhappy of that unsure feeling? Does everyone get that at some point, at whatever degree of intensity? Is this a real issue, or is it a stage I need to work myself through? I want to be sure of myself enough so that I can be sure that people who I get close to really are getting close to me, and not someone I’m trying in vain to mishmash together."

I’m thankful to catch a scent, here and there, of what it felt like to be in high school — a feeling I’m thankful to remember that I thought I’d never forget, but here I am, reading, with fascination, my LJ from high school and realizing how foreign it seems:

"Things have been suddenly really calm around here...the play ended, and the heaploads of work suddenly drizzled off, and it's like the calm before the storm of exams. Gah. Not really looking forward to that. I'm actually really worrying more than usual, seeing as I haven't been paying ANY attention in Algebra II or French, and both are subjects that I tend not to have a natural...'talent' for. :-P

Anyways. Today was surprisingly nice: I have basically no work tonight, and in PE (I'm going to be SO glad to be done with that next year!), basically no one in our class can pitch, and the wind is always acting up during that block for some miraculous reason, so the ball'd go way off and we all got to walk every single base. :D I'm really not one for sports, so I'm really fine just standing and doing nothing (even though it's been FLIPPING FREEZING). And I spent lunch with my friend Elissa- who's the kind of person who'll stay up til four in the morning on a school night for no particular reason and be in a great mood the next morning, then miss days just to hang out with her brother and sister- eating this weirdly good soup from the caf while she explained this revelation she had while watching a documentary on the connection between Jesus Christ and Buddhism on the History channel or something at like 3 AM. It was actually a surprisingly in-depth chat, considering we were sitting at a table between two groups of guys throwing ketchup at each other and whatnot."

I’m thankful to remember that thanks to all of being part of international communities growing up, having gone to a British school for 7th and 8th grade, and having nursed a fondness for books like the Angus, Thongs & Full Frontal Snogging series and Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, I used words like “loads” and “flipping.” I’m thankful to notice that even today, sometimes I’ll find myself asking a question in a sort of British intonation, with that lilt at the end that quickly goes up, down, and then back up to somewhere between those first two points. I’m thankful to realize that my describing this in words probably makes no sense, but to hope that someone might know what I’m talking about and hear precisely what I mean in their mind, or even try it out aloud.

I’m thankful that there’s a paragraph in one post about my starting the South Beach Diet, which was my first concerted effort, in an increasingly unhealthy string of them, to lose weight. I’m thankful to be able to see, from here, my path from having a relatively healthy self-image to a very negative one, to a better one but only because of my eating disorder, to, now, a very good one paired with a marvelously relaxed, sanely unstructured attitude toward eating and exercise. I’m so thankful that I’m finally free from that part of my life.

I’m thankful to have titled of my LJ posts “ramble in d major.” I’m thankful to feel wistful about how big a part of my life music and opera was then. I’m thankful to remember, reassuringly, that although sometimes now I feel like I’ve never been serious enough and able to commit to anything wholeheartedly in my life, I actually did take voice seriously back then, or at least cared a lot about it:

“Just got done with a voice recital...the room was really, really dry and my throat was already hurting to begin with so I didn't sing nearly as well as I can/should have, meh. And I definitely made a very obvious mistake by coming in too early in my sister's and my duet, and pretty much from then on I had this "Oops!" grin on my face, which my parents so amusedly have on camera now.”

I’m thankful to have gotten into Bennington’s low-res MFA program for nonfiction, and to have made the decision to go. I’m thankful that although the news, and the decision, have made me really excited and optimistic about my ability to stick with and work toward my goals with writing, I don’t harbor any (or many) delusions about it: the mere fact of my attending this program won’t solve any problems of mine, writing or otherwise, and it will take no less work to achieve what I want with writing. I’m thankful that sometimes I know precisely what I want to achieve with writing, and that sometimes, I have no idea. I’m thankful just to know that it’s the one thing I’ve stuck with all my life. I’m thankful to be able to stick to something.

- molly (9/10/17). @mollyguinn | tinyletter.com/brainball