i write to be perceived (unfortunately)
diary entry #1 and a lesson in using italics to make a point
i can hear the frogs croaking, but it sounds more like a chirping and i’d like to believe they are friends. it’s summer.
every time summer rolls around i become detrimentally self-obsessed. not even in a mode of vanity or delusion, but more so like i’ve been arrested by the introspection police and my sentence is to look inside and come to terms with the fact that i hate myself—but only in the way that we all hate ourselves. whatever metric you would like to measure that by.
anyways, summer, looking “inward”…
i find it’s not summer until i write one or two essays bitching about something i make exclusive to me when it’s really a universal experience that i just haven’t figured out is universal yet. or boys. man, i’m only a year or two older since the girl who started her blog and i want to shake her! all those characters allotted to boys who simply did not deserve them. it’s a waste.
well, the unfortunate fact of the matter is i don’t really know how else to write an essay. talking about myself feels crass. you wanna hear about my writing process? here’s a glimpse:
a boy i had a crush on last year liked my instagram post maybe a week or so ago for the first time in over a year.
woah.
alas, he liked my post!
he liked my post and i fell down a mental rabbit hole of every interaction we shared together the year prior—over the span of two days. i couldn’t quite move on from one night (of two) we spent in a karaoke bar in london… i thought we were going to have a mystical and magical rom-com moment singing to abba but he just came over to tell me to get off the couches, that “they’re strict about that here.” oh my GOD, was i mortified. the six pound wine i downed earlier could not save me from the level of embarrassment i felt in that moment. i still think about it, and the fact that i drunk texted him a month later “Hi,” and the fact that he never responded.
i knew him for two days. two days, and i still think about those two interactions maybe weekly. over a year later.
i started thinking to myself, “god, i’m so sorry if you ever think of me.”
i’m sorry if you ever think of me, because i think of you ten times more. in technicolor fantasies, delusions of grandeur, ways i could never articulate in the written sphere—not for lack of verbiage, but for a suffocating obstacle called my ego and dignity.
the memory of him in my mind is ripe, plump, fruitful and pleasant—the one i’ve left him with, at least the one i’ve fabricated in my mind: rotten, sour, tangy, absurdly and boisterously vile—to be dramatic.
i can’t help but look outwards when looking inwards.
that sounds so effing stupid but stay with me. i assess how i could be perceived in the worst case scenario and then make a mental note to never ever allow myself to grow close to that destiny for as long as i can control it. some things are just intrinsic, and i know that all too well.
there was a cute guy who transferred into my literature class this past semester and i was pissed off because he had the most beautiful pair of doc martens. a deep, cherry red, lacquered like they were drenched in wine, but only in places of wear and aging. the maroon sheen faded into black leather like a tease, whispering “don’t you wanna see more?” oh my god i lusted for those shoes. i think i used my jealousy and envy to disguise the fact i actually had a crush on him and his face, not just his footwear. i didn’t want to admit to myself i had a crush on a guy in my class, one i’d be forced to see twice a week for the remaining three months of the semester. and then i started seeing him everywhere so my aversion and attempts at composure were no use anyway.
it was obvious i had a crush on him, and obvious to me he had a crush on the girl that he sat next to. i don’t blame him—didn’t then either. she’s cool, effortless, chic, it almost feels like a disservice to try to characterize her because she’s just that cool. esoteric, as a person.
so yes: i had a crush on him. and i didn’t care, really. what’s the worst that could happen? i think he’s pretty and we never talk? well that’s literally exactly what happened. the most i “spoke” to him was telling everyone at the bar how cute i thought he was, only to look up and see him standing right behind us.
we were in a raunchy dive bar in downtown boston so i don’t know why i was expecting privacy in the first place. i fear the eye tag bug bit me—bit us—and no words were exchanged. ever. he for sure heard me say it at least once out of the dozen times i mentioned it, but what else can you do when the bartender has a heavy pour and you’re on your third rum and coke?
back to my main point. i have to ask myself, what are all the ways i can be perceived in these situations i thrust myself into? in this case, the answer is abysmally simple:
boy crazy
crazy
crazy about boys
really nothing good is coming to mind tbh
so i left the bar and knew i can’t just be the girl who talks about whoever piqued her interest because that’s stupid and i’m an adult and can make a move if i want. but my confidence in making the first move was stunted in the sixth grade when i quickly learned being mean to boys did not land the same way as the common notion “boys are mean cause they like you.”
instead, i fantasize about 2013-2015 “y/n,” in her flannels and big nerdy glasses while reading books at concerts or listening to her special playlists in her wired headphones at social events. the “y/n” was never that interesting, but at the very least she appeared to be. i want to be her.
for a long time, i’ve felt like i’m constantly performing. superglued to a stage where my role is to be perceived, even in the solitude of my childhood bedroom. the music i listen to, the books i read, the “media” i “consume.” i’ve been “consuming” so much god damn thought daughter content (sidenote, didn’t we leave that in 2024???) i’m going to perform a d.i.y. lobotomy on myself.
author’s note: i will never feel remorse or be apologetic for joking about lobotomies. it’s not a joke. i fantasize about one on the daily.
anyways, in my childhood bedroom, i romanticize the hell out of myself—it’s practically genetic when you’re a self-loathing writer girl like me. i’m currently writing the first (and probably only) draft of this piece in my kiki’s delivery service diary, which i’ve been dying to tell you for a couple of pages now, fyi. i’m kicking my feet and listening to my special playlist and making the intentional artistic decision to leave that in, amongst the many lines i should could probably cut and prune, because i’m on my knees begging: please! perceive me this way! only this one!
i’ve said it before, probably published these exact words on my blog before, but i’ll bring it to light again:
when i write, i don’t sit down and decide i’m going to write today. my mind decides for me. when i thought “god, i’m so sorry if you think about me,” it nagged at me for days. like a little gnat in the back of my head, pleading write me! write me! write me! until i finally contextualized it on a page tonight. i wonder if a thought so self-absorbed in nature feels dignified knowing it was immortalized in a ghibli-themed red notebook. i did choose that much.
i feel pretentious and sickly in this sense. i am compelled to write. i have little choice not to, therefore making me a moth to a flame—desperately longing for an audience that has most certainly heard my shit time and time again whether it’s from my mouth or someone else’s that said it first.
once, a writing professor asked me, “what’s your affliction? what plagues you while you write?”
i feel pretty confidently that mine is inserting myself into existing conversations, mostly mundane and truly unimportant, and still doing nothing revolutionary with the space i’ve carved out for myself. i go to school to be a writer, but i don’t see myself as a writer at all. i am a regurgitator at best, parroting all of the plights and horrors of being a young woman in the world i’m living in, like the greatest illness is to be burdened with thought. i long for uniqueness in the face of ubiquity.
i write because sometimes i enjoy my thoughts too much it seems like a selfish crime to keep them all to myself. i write to shed everything depressing and overwhelming just to look back a year later and call myself stupid. i write for everyone and anyone who thinks of me, putting my heart on my sleeve before they can take it from me.
i—and i hate to admit it, but not enough to stop myself from admitting it—write to be perceived. maybe i’m a masochist for crafting a stage and planting myself dead center on it, to be observed, or maybe i’m a sadist for expecting you to do the observing.
anyways. i can’t hear the frogs anymore, but it’s a muggy evening in may so i will expect their valiant return tomorrow.
