“Go fucking forth”
This week, I wrote these three final words in a journal my friend Madeline gave me on my seventeenth birthday. In it, I’ve written love poetry, personal essays, letters to God (yes, dear Lord, they’re so embarrassing.) It’s filled with musings about good pens, ponderings on the tagline “simple is sexy” for my now-defunct personal blog, several pages of tracking everything I ate (Count Chocula made the list), and a quote from a Regina Spektor song: “today we’re younger than we’re ever gonna be.”
It’s heavy with thirteen years-worth of fragments I’ve put into it. I’m glad that it’s done.
For my final entry, though, I didn’t spend the time reminding Emily ages 17–30 that I’ll be okay, etc., etc.. I do that all the time, and Emily ages 17–30 is feeling a little sick of it. Instead, I asked this of my round-faced teenage self: What advice do you have for me?
I stumped her at first.
Suddenly, so much came back to me. At seventeen, the idea of celebrity did not frighten me. I wanted to be known; I felt that few people ever heard me, really. I reminded my me self that having an inescapable voice was what I was seeking all those years ago. I’ve sought it, again and again and again, in different ways ever since. I reminded myself that I’m worthy of the ears, as long as I do right by them and treat them with kindness. I wrote, quite dramatically, this: “Your vengeance for being ignored became the force for every good thing that has since happened in your life.” Whether that’s worth an ounce of truth, who knows. It’s certainly worth a chuckle.
But the best advice that she/me gave me/us was this: Buckle down in your weirdness. After more than a decade of weaving in and out of oddness, I’m rerouting back to it at full speed. I’ll get diverted, I’m sure, and you’ll still find me restrained and stone-faced some days. There’s so much I didn’t know then, almost as much as I don’t know now.
And that’s why I think I’ll take my advice.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, obviously listen to this song, and text Madeline to tell her that you finally finished the journal.
Buckle down in your weirdness