Author: uuggla

Born in 1996 Over the coming months, I'll be publishing several journal entries a day in chronological order. I began journaling in 2007, when I was eleven years old. Even then I wrote as though I were archiving my life, collecting details about my world. As I grew older, journaling became more of a description of my emotional world. I am an aspiring creative nonfiction writer who is producing very little since graduating college this Spring. But with this unusually thorough account of my entire adolescence, I feel as though I have been given a gift that has been under my nose this whole time. This is a practice in forgiveness and vulnerability. It is also a way to laugh at myself.

December 11, 2012

If he makes a playlist for you, that’s it…

The world is supposed to end in 10 days. I’ve been thinking about it since I first heard of the whole thing four years ago. I was so scared, but I don’t believe it anymore. It’s just so close that it’s hard not to consider it. I’m the age I knew I would be, 16 years old, in my junior year of high school. I’m not the girl I thought I’d be. I abandoned the child that I was, I abandoned my beliefs and rebuilt myself. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just something that makes my brain feel numb, like I’m not really the one thinking when I think about it. The planets in our solar system are supposed to be in perfect alignment for the first time in 25,000 years or something like that. The poles are supposed to shift and cause massive natural disasters all over the planet. Destruction by perfection. All the little rock marbles in a row, exploding one by one. Everything seems to be moving in this way, everything seems to be so perfectly aligned, like it never has been before, as though everything has led up to this. Maybe all hell will break loose, maybe natural disasters will rage, maybe chaos will bloom like springtime. Or maybe it’s all made up, and I’ll keep going. Maybe there’s just a tiny solar system inside of all of us, sometimes in perfect alignment, I can’t even take this world’s beauty and cruelty sometimes.

December 4, 2012

Today was the talent show at East. Calvin played first, he opened and the song was written about me (well, parts of it) and it was so great that I almost had a heart attack. He sang that I had passion and a personality and that we could talk forever in front of everyone. The song also said that he found somebody he could love. I was a little embarrassed but in the best way possible. I feel really special tonight. Really really. He kisses me like he means it, like I’m something he is touching for the first time and will never touch again. It’s beautiful, really. Life is really about nothing, but I think that the most I can do is wait for the moments. They will not come if you are searching, your hands and eyes scare them away. But they spring on you at the perfect time, when you’re at peace somewhere else, when you least expect. There I was, in the passenger seat with my shoes on the dashboard and a lit cigarette under my index finger. Neither of us said a word for miles and miles. I really hate to overindulge but it’s so hard not to when days go like this. Live for the moments, die for the spaces inbetween. Maybe I was right, maybe this will be my year for the very first time.

I’ll admit, there is fear inside me that I’ll pace for too long and I’ll look up and find myself in an entirely different place. I’m starting to feel good, but I’m so afraid that I’m going to fuck it up for myself. Remember not to take yourself too seriously, think rationally about the size of your problems.

So whether it be in a field, wearing nothing but sunshine, or on the beach, wearing nothing but moonlight and sand… pure happiness can come at the strangest times. Sometimes it speaks to you through the sounds of melting snow, bursting to life at the slightest suggestion of warmth. In my own experience, happiness has always nicked the edge of my heart at the most perfect times. Once it evaporated from the soil while I laid in the green field on Madeline Island, wearing nothing but sunshine. Once it poured down like heavy rain while I sat on the beach, wearing nothing but moonlight and sand. Tonight, I felt the glow somewhere in the center of me while I sat in the passenger seat with my shoes on the dashboard and a lit cigarette under my index finger. If alone, I think it could have come to me as melancholy, but I think you must have changed it’s color.

December 3, 2012

I feel strange tonight. I’m laying here on my bed, and the window is open, and even now I can’t write more than a few words down at a time because of this restlessness. Maybe it’s the night air, or maybe there’s just the full moon getting inside me, it’s making my skin crawl and my heart pound. I’m watching the screen of a dusty CD player flash ‘no disk, no disk’ and the incense above it is giving off smoke that is calmly ascending through the window. And yet, here I am, am I really losing my cool? I’m not sure where to turn for release, which must come soon. Is it burning and caustic? Is it warm and passionate? It’s hard to say when both have a place in me. I can’t be sure. I need to create something, or get this out, or anything, I need to escape my mind and see it mapped out in front of me. I should be doing chemistry homework. Have I given up? What’s wrong with me!! Or is it right??

November 27, 2012

If I could say just one thing, I don’t know what it would be. It would be simple.

So many songs that I wish I had written. So many things I’d wish I’d said, so many things I’d rather be. If I could say one thing, maybe it would be a question. But what could I ask that would be answered honestly?

What about her? She would ask with words by threes and fours, she would say the things that didn’t matter. Those moments in between were what mattered. The spaces and the dot-dot-dot. And maybe she’d love him but she couldn’t for long, and maybe he’d love her but he couldn’t for long, he couldn’t so honestly. And maybe she’ll cry or maybe she’ll fall silent again, drowning in a sea of dot-dot-dot, spaces so long she’ll forget how to speak and she’ll live between lines just like old times. She forgot how to eat again, she forgot how to sleep because silence is so loud these nights. She’d open her mouth to test the waters once again, but she’d betray herself before betraying another. He’d open his to give a long string of I-don’t-know, all that dot-dot-dot, he proves her right once again, once again, once again. But that kiss in the snow. He was tired of waiting. She was tired of everything, save tongue. Even though her hands were full she took the moment in both.

November 26, 2012

Today was nearly perfect… I had a fairly okay day at school, and no plans. I was walking home when I heard my name, so I turned around and Calvin told me to get my ass in his car. We went to his house and had a little ~cooking party~. He cooked me a steak which I actually hate but it was still nice. We started to watch Garden State but got bored and so we went sledding instead (there is snow now!) and it was great! Then we went back to his house to warm up and we made a blanket fort and snuggled and destroyed it in a tickle fight (as long as he’s touching me…) and then sort of dozed off. He drove me home at ten and as I walked up to my house I heard his car door open and he just ran up and said “Fuck, I’m so tired of waiting” and he kissed me. It was such a good kiss… wow, I almost died, I stood there like an idiot, I could barely say goodbye, oh it was so wonderful. I’m in so much trouble what the fuck.

November 18, 2012

Calvin spontaneously took me to Cornucopia, WI tonight to show me his cabin. It’s so cute there. We had a fire on the beach, it was so lovely. We sang and smoked Marlboros the whole way there. Then we went and hot-tubbed at Ashley’s house and played the question game. It was so fun.

I guess I really don’t know if it’s for real yet. I have no idea how he really feels. It drives me crazy and makes me want him so much more. Still waiting for him to kiss me. Who knows. I laid in front of Sara’s fireplace all weekend. It was great and much needed.

November 13, 2012

I remember one day in March. I think I was eleven. I don’t want to think of the year. I made my dad two pies on his birthday. I don’t remember how old he was. They were caramel apple pecan pies. We ate both right that day, the three of us. Jody peeled the apples for me because I was nervous around knives. I don’t have that problem anymore.

You know I wish I could tell you that it’s ok that you didn’t get into NYU. But I guess I would be lying if I said that to you tonight. Not tonight. No, tonight is terrible, tonight is broken glass and loud pillow-yelling and that’s how it is tonight. But the thing is that I can say those same words sometime, I can say ‘It’s okay that you didn’t get accepted to NYU’ and it will be true. I guess that’s all I can give you tonight.

November 12, 2012

I never, ever know. How is it possible to really be this unsure? About everything? Maybe I’m just a million different people all pressed into one, maybe I’m no one at all.

Maybe everything that I do is driven by the desire to sink into the dark. Maybe my true love is thinking. I think I’m sad all the time because it validates at least something. Because if I were to take all of that away, if I were to shed all my tears so that there were no more, I would be made of nothing. At least I am something on the nights I want to hurt myself. I’m an abandoned house in the woods. It’s so much easier to fill myself up with sadness than it is to accept absence.

November 4, 2012

DAMN. I had such a perfect weekend. The concert on Friday was so fun. Afterwards, I went to Calvin’s house and we listened to music and talked till 4 am. We did the same last night. We listened to Ella Fitzgerald and drank and laughed and it was so wonderful. I really like him… I haven’t felt alive in so long. I ended up sleeping over last night. He gave me his bed and slept on the floor. I sort of wish he would have slept next to me. He played music while I drifted off on the couch. I’m even lending him my copy of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which has never been done. I feel so good about all of this, it’s been so beautiful and spontaneous and it feels so right. We have a connection that I can’t really explain I guess. I’m trying not to be afraid.

November 2, 2012

Well, I am stupid again, I still like Calvin. He likes me, too. We’ve been getting together more, and I think we’re very compatible. We carved pumpkins together on the night before Halloween. They turned out really cute. I want to know about his quirks and unwrap his mind and hear his secrets. I want to feel like a girl.

I’ve become suddenly obsessed with The Shins. I can’t get enough! Tonight is my first a’cappella concert. I’m hanging out with Calvin afterwards.