New Year, Old Me: If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Fall of 1992.  I was in tenth grade, 15 years old and extremely redundant.  These first entries will be from a journal I had to keep as an assignment for class.  It's crazy embarrassing but I'm going to type it out for you as is, only changing certain names to protect... yeah.  I'm just going to change the names.  Anything in parentheses ( ) was originally written that way.  Any additions in the present will be shown in brackets [ ] and italicized.  I'm startled by how much I haven't changed, the major exception being that I'm less corny.  I think.  This journal eventually devolves into one-sided conversation with "Dave," my "boyfriend" at the time.  God.  Have fun out there, kids.   

9/2/1992 [Note that what follows spans multiple days, I just didn't write down the date each time I began writing again.] 
This is when I have the most trouble writing, when I'm told I have to.  I can write pages and pages depending on my mood and my best stuff comes out when I'm depressed.  Most people write their best when they're depressed (I'm a poet and I know it!).  Madonna says she does.  (Little Madonna references are good for your soul.)  My 12 year old nephew loves her so much.  So do I but I don't think I like her as much as he does.  Her face is plastered all over his bedroom walls.  I'm a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan myself.  I think they're great.  However arranged.  Be it Anthony, Flea, Jack and Hillel (now deceased) or Anthony, Flea, John and Chad or Anthony, Flea, Chad and Eric (pronounced ah-reek).

You want 4 pages a week of this stuff!  Ugh!

Well Dave spoke to me today and I spoke to the other Dave about the first Dave and the first Dave about the second Dave.  It's a very complicated subject.  I don't know if I should be telling you this, but you said you don't read it anyway, but I love the first Dave.  I think I do anyway.  I don't know if he knows, I don't think he does.  He [*scribbled out* then the word "before"] but I don't know.  That was way back at the end of July when we last spoke (well, wrote).  I feel ill and giddy.  I love the word giddy.  So I must really love him.  The horror!

[Sometime later]
I don't know about that.  Dave came to our little family shin-dig Monday.  I like him, but I think it's more of a friendly thing.  I think.  I want to find out what it is but I'll have to ask him somehow, some way.  He always mentions his "girlfriend" and it's starting to bug me now.  It didn't at first but...  That must prove I like him.  I think the fact that I'm saying all this is because I don't want to like him(?).

Ugh!  I don't know.  We'll talk on the phone for hours sometimes but not much ever comes of it.  So I'm going to write him in study hall and I'll have to call him tonight.  It's safer to talk about things like this instead of writing it because someone could get their grubby paws on it and that could be potentially devastating.  (That was a little melo-dramatic but that's what I'm best at.)  [This is like, foreshadowing.  Not that I knew it then.]

I hate school.  I hate the thought of school.  It's more the thought than actual school.  Actual school I like for the most part.  But I think it's bogus to be a teenager.  A teenager the way most are.  I'm nothing like a typical teenager.  I think a lot of that stems from not being a people person.  (I just realized how moronic this is going to when I read this at a later date.)  [Yup.]  I'm not into all the socializing and gossiping.  It's boring.  I want to do more, other things.  I just don't know what that is.  How come nobody talks about the important stuff in life?  How come I don't talk about the important stuff in life?

Back to Dave.  He gets on my nerves so bad but I guess he's just being normal.  I'm such a problem thing.  He gets mad at me because I don't answer his questions to his standards.  But I can't help that.  That's how I've always been.  Communication of the verbal kind was never really part of my family.  We're such dysfunctional things.  I come from a long line of dysfunctional things.  It's part of being a child of an alcoholic I guess.  You never let anybody get close to you, you can't tell people your real feelings and your life just ends up being nothing but a bunch of disappointments and empty relationships.  It's horrible but I don't know what to do about it.  That's part of it, too.  Not being able to do anything about it.  You want to but you just feel like you can't.

And I really like Dave but I know I'm going to ruin it if I haven't already.  This has been going on for almost a year, too.  Months, anyway.

My sister's going to tape the MTV awards for me.  I'm so excited but I won't see it till after everyone else.  And the Chili's are going to be there!  Performing live!!!  And I won't even see it till this weekend I'm sure, ugh!

I have more stupid crisises [sic] than I should.  Actually if I didn't have what I did I'd be in a coma.  I can hardly say I have a life.  But I like what I do have which I don't think anybody could understand but I'm really happy the way things are.  I'd like [*words scribbled out*] and get away from my mother but otherwise I'm happy.  Except when people like Dave try to find out about me.

I've got to make a phone call but I'm afraid he won't talk to me anyway.  He said he was never going to call me again.  I don't know if that means he won't talk to me if I call him or if that's what he wants, me to call him?  Why do I torture myself?  He's so abusive.  Really.  I should realize that and forget about him.  Abusive as in saying he's not going to call me and telling me he hates me when he doesn't just to get me to say things.  [What the fuck?]  He's got a self-image problem.  Poor boy, and you can't help but feel sorry for him and despise him at the same time.  He's just as difficult as I am.  I must be obsessed or otherwise why would it concern me so much?  I know he probably thinks I don't care about him.  But he makes it so difficult sometimes.

Great, now he's not home.  You always know after the third ring that nobody's home.  Ugh!  I need to talk to him.

My father's here.  I hate him.  He's just looking for his check but it's not here and he'll probably be harassing my mom for a place to stay.  She won't (pretty sure) but if she ever did I wouldn't stay with her.  I don't want to go into that now.

I wish I knew what happened to Sarah.  It's like she just disappeared off the face of the earth.  And I don't know if I should try to write to her again, I'll wait a few more days before I write again.

Now I'm mad!  He hung up on me before I got a chance to hang up on him.  It's not fair!  I never get to hang up on him.  Ugh!

More news of this subject.  Last night we talked on the phone till 12:30am.  About stuff.  I learned a lot of interesting things.  I don't know about him but I think I like him.  There's something I haven't said before.  [This appears to be sarcasm, I think?]  But I'm afraid we'll fall right back into doing things just like before.  We fight with each other and then late at night he tells all kinds of things, good things, that I want him to say.  (This music is terrible!)  [My teacher would play new-agey music while we were supposed to be writing in class.  I mention it a number of times.]  I just hope I'm telling him things he wants to hear.  But I don't think I am.  And I lied to him.  I wish I hadn't have but I did and I feel awful but it's not something I'm going to go back and tell the truth about.  I couldn't now.  It's not even that important.  [Clearly, since I have no idea what it could have been that I would have to lie about.]  But he's so sweet sometimes.  Sometimes.  Not as often as I wish he would be.

I did finally break down and tell him all the bad things about him.  The bad things he does to me anyway.  Which I previously wrote.  And he apologized profusely for being mean to me.  He blamed alcohol.  Which worries me.  [♪ If you could see me now...♪]  I wish he didn't drink like he does or says he does.  [*Words scribbled out* Upon closer inspection I can see that it says "and I wish that he didn't smoke.]  Another somehow related to my Pa.

He always wants me to ask him questions.  Questions I don't know to ask.  He can talk forever but that's my problem.  I can't.  And a lot of times he does most the talking.  That probably doesn't bother him but it worries me.

So, that's enough for now.  I'm disturbed by the number of times I wrote "Ugh!" like it was a thing I should write.  I'm fascinated by the way I switch from topic to topic but always return to talking about "Dave."  I'll try editing some of it down next time since, like I said at the beginning, it is very redundant.  Hearts!