I have to acknowledge some of this is cringe. Actually most of it is. But there are valuable things to be heard between the lines of my angry, lonely, 16 year old self. I was frustrated because I knew early on that no matter how hard I tried I would always feel different. I think what fucked with me so bad was thinking that I was the same. 2016 was the age of indie sleaze, and tumblr. I was obsessed with bands like arctic monkeys, the 1975, catfish and the bottlemen. I spent my teenage years romanticizing toxic relationships and men with drug addictions. However, simultaneously I was so aware of how painfully regular I was. I was not the girl that they wrote the song about, or the girl that would hop on their motorcycle in the middle of the night. I was the girl that had to get to school 30 minutes earlier than everyone else to “mentally prepare”, and the girl that ate the same lunch everyday because I knew it would be safe and I wouldn’t get a stomach ache halfway through the day. I’m glad to report at least 50% of the anxiety I faced in those early years have subsided. I think largely due to growing up, tattooing making me afraid of nothing, and possibly the copious amounts of weed I smoked between now and then frying that part of my brain off. Either way, my writing reminds me of how at odds I was with myself. How painful it was to be my true self. It was so painful I couldn’t even be myself in my journal.
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