May 28, 1991

I am so tired I could die. I wrote this in English class and am now transferring it to my diary. We did the Endurance run today. 2nd period and boy am I tired. Even now that it’s 4th period I’m still tired. At least I’m not sweating like was in ITT (3rd period). I walked a lot of it but still we had to go around 6 times. I finished after the bell rang. It was pretty embarrassing. I collapsed when I was done and started crying ’cause I couldn’t take it. And I’m not even sure how many times I went around.

                                           I vividly remember this. I’ve even written about it before on this blog, without realizing a first-hand account lay hidden within the pages of my old diary.

I often wish I wasn’t anemic. I wish I had energy and I wish I was a fast runner and good in sports and an all around good athlete. I wish I didn’t get eye infections. I really wish I had 20/20 vision. Sometimes I wish my skin wasn’t so pale (but sometimes I like it because it makes me different). I wish I was pretty. I wish my fat was in the right places (ahem). I wish I wasn’t so shy. I wish boys liked me. But I like myself, if I had the chance (except for having 20/20 vision and not being fat, I’d stay the same except for the skin rashes).

                                         This last part was scratched out and then rewritten elsewhere on the page. I can’t tell what I’d originally written. But I can tell you that none of those wishes ever came true. My sight began to weaken when I was about four years old; too young to be able to express what was going on. My mother thought I was going crazy because I told her I could see angels. Turns out I was trying to tell her I could see halos, i.e. lens flares. Eventually she figured it out and brought me to an optometrist and I got glasses. My sight continued to deteriorate so I had to get new glasses every year. When I was about ten I got contacts and when I was fourteen or fifteen I got my first eye infection so it was back to the glasses. I finally sought out eye surgery when I was thirty-three, but my vision was too poor to be a candidate for lasik so I got intraocular lens implant surgery, which is a whole other story for another time. The skin rash I refer to is eczema, and that also merits its own post because it relates to my distrust of doctors.

What I really wish is that I lived in a place just like Star Trek: The Next Generation. With all the people, just like in the show. But I’d settle for being a regular on the show. Oh life is so depressing! If they do the Endurance run at BHS I will try to get out of it somehow!

                                         I was obsessed with TNG, and I fantasized about living on the Enterprise all the time, but I was also realistic enough to know such a thing could never be, so in an effort to make my fantasies more attainable I fantasized about being an actor on the show. So, about 1% more attainable. Really, I just wanted any escape from my life, but it would take at least another decade for me to learn that I really wanted to escape myself, and still another decade to learn that what I actually needed was self-acceptance. The good news is that my next school, BHS, did not, in fact, enforce the endurance run.

 


2 thoughts on “May 28, 1991

  1. I find it sad that so many of us (myself included) take so long to accept themselves. Seeing the pretty, confident, artistic, intelligent woman you are today, it’s difficult to imagine the depths of the self-doubts or your younger self. At least until, we remember our own.

    I see Julia’s suffering now and find it agonizing to accept that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Everyone has to exorcise their own demons. Some are never able to.

    When we sibs met in Winnipeg for Mom’s interment, I have to say I learned things about Barry and Brian that I’d never known before. They both talked about leaving Calgary to go off to the university and program chosen for them by our dad (who, by the way, didn’t pay for any of it). Both were homesick and ill-prepared to live on their own, and both hated the disciplines Dad had dictated they must embrace. I only mention this because it illustrates to me how little people actually know about one another. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why “the boys” were so different from David and me even though they have the same genetic makeup. Finally, after 62 years (my age), it’s becoming clear to me.

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