Monday, July 5, 2010

Inside Jokes and the Need for Control

May 3, 1995

Beth,

Well, seems like a day without tears and fights and horrible trouble would be just about impossible. What is wrong with my stupid life? Why can't I just be normal and not get myself so mixed up in everything. I'm so confused!

Kristen is acting like a selfish pig. Ellen and Kristen are getting so close it seems like its them against us (Diana and I). It's so weird. I've had so many bad things happen in the last two days its not even funny. I wonder if everyone's life is as pathetically horrid and confusing as mine. Or maybe its a stage, like before my period or something where my life just falls apart and maybe everything will be better when I go to Nobles next year. I hope so. I hate my life so so so much!

Love,
Corey

May 4, 1995 {YES THATS RIGHT. THE VERY NEXT DAY.)
Beth,
Finally my life is back to normal!! Kristen and I are better friends than ever before. Ellen... well she thinks we're friends but there was this whole thing was a "purple scrunchie" and it was supposedly an inside joke between Kristen and Ellen. Then I found out it was just a thing Ellen and Kristen did to make me and Diana mad. I'm a tad upset with Kristen, and really mad at Ellen! But my life is good, I'm in control now, so I'm content.
Love and Peace,
Corey

Couldn't resist putting these posts one after the other as they are written in The Journal. I like the dramatic, nonsensical shifts in emotion. That kind of instability must be terrifying. Not that things now are predictable or logical, but they definitely can't swing that quickly and with that little awareness. I like that the second entry sounds like its weeks later, things are "finally" back to normal. It makes me think you don't actually have any understanding of the passage of time when you are 12.

Purple scrunchie. This scenario makes actually SO much sense to me. It is exactly the kind of thing we did at this age (me, Diana, Ellen and Kristen... a dramatic little foursome). There was the constant shifting of those relationships and who was "closest" and how to prove that you were "closest" to someone else. Thank GOD it was four people and not three because with my victim mentality and intense overdramatic narcissism, I'm pretty sure I would have been the odd one out.

What do we really learn from these entries? I think the telling sentence is the last one. "I'm in control no, so I'm content". I don't mind being in fights with my friends... as long as I have the upper hand. And there's that tug of humiliation that I am still (hopefully just the tiniest, most manageable bit) my 12 year old self.

Oh and the hope that Nobles will make everything better?? Maybe the most ill informed, depressing thing I've ever written...