February 12, 1993

Maybe it isn’t already written in stone. Maybe I won’t go into Fine Arts at Cegep. Maybe I’ll go into Drama or whatever it’s called at John Abbott. Mr Whitmore said I should seriously consider going into a career in theatre or acting. He said we he go the feeling that I knew what he was talking about when he talks about acting.  Maybe it’s not just a stupid fantasy. Maybe I can be an actress. I’ve always known I could act (or thought so) but it’s great to have it confirmed by a painfully honest drama teacher. He said I have talent. Maybe art is not my only talent, maybe that’s not the way to go.

                              I did in fact go into theatre in cegep (a type of college that only exists in Quebec, which is like the bridge between high school and university). It was a lot of fun, but ultimately pointless (like most fun things).

Anyway I haven’t eaten lunch in two days. So now my first meal comes at 3:00 p.m. and my second at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. My eating habits are so screwed up. I’ve decided not to eat lunch at school anymore. My problem is how to get that past mom.

                             I don’t see how that would have been difficult. It’s not like she was at school with me. I think the reason I didn’t want to eat at school is because I didn’t want to have to go to the cafeteria and interact with other people. I remember at a certain point I started simply sitting at my locker during lunch and spending the time drawing. In my memories though, I was also eating during this time but I guess not. 

I wish I could get out of my own realm of reality and enter a real reality. On second thought, I don’t.

                                 Yeah, reality’s overrated. 

reality_-_worst_game_ever

February 3, 1993

It didn’t take long but I hate myself again. 

                                             lol. Nice that I can laugh at such statements now.

I don’t want my picture in the yearbook and I’m definitely not going to Grad Ball. I wish I hadn’t put my baby picture in the yearbook. I won’t write my grand blurb and I regret buying the yearbook. I don’t want to go to Cegep next year. I just want to be invisible. I want to die. I hate my life, I hate myself, I hate everything about me. I wish I could escape.

                                     Indeed, I did not go to Grad Ball or to my graduation ceremony. This is a minor example of several events (or non-events) in my life that I’m tempted to regret, but realize I cannot. The truth is, if I had gone to Grad Ball, I would not have enjoyed myself. I had no friends, not because no one liked me, but because I liked no one, least of all myself. At that time in my life I would have been miserable at such an event. It would have only served as another opportunity for me to beat myself up for my shortcomings. I can look back and interpret this so-called missed milestone as a failure, but if I had gone, it would have been an even worse failure because I would have been angry and disappointed with the way I’d interacted (or not interacted) with others.

I can think of many other missed opportunities such as this in my life. Things that might have been, but could not have been, because of who I was at the time they occurred. I often find myself frustrated with where I am in my life, and wish I’d taken action on certain things earlier, as I often feel as though I’m about a decade behind where I should be, or where most people are. A lot of the socializing that most people accomplished in their teens, I did in my twenties. Much of the growing up the typical person does in their twenties, I did in my thirties. Same with my career (both the one I get paid for, and the one I don’t). Yet I cannot blame myself for this slow growth, because I simply didn’t have the capacity to do more earlier, as I was busy working through other struggles. I’m still working through things, as no doubt we all are, and there’s no point in admonishing myself for this. I’m on my own path, no one else’s, and that’s fine. Besides, there are other ways in which I’m ahead of the curve, compared to my peers, so if I’m going to play the “grass is always greener” game, I need to acknowledge how green my own grass is once in a while.

grass-is-greener-bullshit

January 28, 1993

It’s Thursday and there’s no school tomorrow, yippee! That’s especially good because I just got my period but really bad ’cause Jacques is coming tomorrow. I hope his plane crashes. Should I feel guilty for saying that? Ahh, who cares!

                        I’ve written about Jacques before and how I hated him but can’t quite figure out why. Just reading his name now, as I was transcribing this, gave me the creeps. What did he do???

I like myself at the moment, I’ll say why but let me begin at the beginning. I’ve been feeling petty stupid because I never signed up to get my grad photo taken and now it’s too late, but I didn’t because at first I didn’t know it was for the yearbook and the teacher (idiot!) forgot to give us the notice papers about all this. So when the time came for grads who somehow missed getting it done to sign up again I was like, I guess I’ll go sign up Friday but Friday school was cancelled due to freezing rain! I guess I might have gone Monday but I was like, why bother, I have no friends anyway, who cares?! Then Wednesday I felt even dumber ’cause in drama we couldn’t go to the auditorium for some reason so we went to the fishbowl and I sat on gum! So I had a big wad of pink gum on my white jeans for the next class and it was really embarrassing ’cause I had to go up to the front of the class to say my speech for public speaking. God, I almost died. But the speech went well enough even though I spoke too fast. Today, this morning, I was feeling disappointed ’cause i didn’t get chosen for the semi-finals and it’s not fair ’cause half the class wasn’t there yesterday so some who might have voted for me didn’t (but I probably wouldn’t have gotten enough votes anyway, with my touchy subject [does God exist?]. It’s just as well not so many people were there so they didn’t see my bubblegum ass!) So anyway, as I said I got my period so I was having major cramps in my classes before drama and when drama came around I was praying to Q I wouldn’t have to say my story. I went to the bathroom and before I went into the auditorium and crouched down into the hall and cried, that’s how bad I felt. So I was all uncomfortable in the class and then Mr. Whitmore goes: Nicole, you’re next! So I’m like, oh shit! But I went up there and my cramps subsided and I said my  Echo and Narcissus story. I mixed up some lines sometimes but no one noticed (except Jane of course, who I practiced on). Everyone really liked it! Especially Mr. Whitmore who said it got a 95%. He also said I would have made a good Helene in Midsummer Night’s Dream (the play he was gonna do but didn’t). So I’m pissed that I didn’t gt the chance to be Helena in a school play but I’m still feeling pretty good from that uplifting compliment. Sigh, life is worth living. 

                             Well ok.

P.S. Mom is afraid of losing her job because… boy it’s a long story, worthy of TV. But I won’t tell it, I’ve written enough.

                          Yeah, god forbid you write anything interesting that isn’t all about you. I now have no recollection of what this TV worthy drama was, except that my mother’s boss was quite the piece of work.

P.P. S. Hey, did I ever write about x-mas vacation? I didn’t? Well, it was great. I got two new porcelain dolls. I love them. My other gifts were cool too. I was on the verge of happiness then, more than I am now. I really hate school I guess. Cegep application time soon, ahhhhh!

hate-school

 

December 10, 1992

I can’t wait ’till x-mas vacation. Only 6 more school days.

                         I still count down to vacay.

Isn’t it strange how I can only fantasize in the privacy of my own house (usually my room, sometimes TV room) when there’s no one else around? It’s like I’m afraid the people around me will read my thoughts.

                       I wasn’t talking about erotic fantasies or anything. Just regular melancholy wishing.

Once again I’m in Whitmore’s class, supposed to be writing an essay due Monday that I haven’t even started yet. I never write in my diary anymore. I only write on papers and insert them in. I should really rewrite the shorter ones or this diary won’t be able to close. I’m gonna have so much to do this x-mas vacation. I have so much to do before x-mas vac. In my last class I had the hiccups mondo time and now my stomach is grumbling an 8.5 on the Richter scale. STAR TREK TNG was one of my fave episodes last night – the one about the time loop thing. So cool! As usual Data saves the day. I’ve been thinking about a STAR TREK show that my bro and I invented. It will be called STAR TREK: THE CONTINUING MISSION. Cool, eh?

                      Yeah, super cool bro. And why did I continuously all caps ‘Star Trek’ in this entry? 

AAAAAGGG my stomach hurts! I’ve gotta buy a couple candy grams. I complain about it but I like receiving them, it’s a good feeling to know that people care enough about you to send you a 35¢ candy cane via homeroom mail. Sounds cheesy, and I guess it is. I don’t even like candy canes! I’m getting three as far as I know, so I’ll put them on the tree! Our tree’s nice I think. I did most of the decorating. I wish I had a gift exchange to do (not school wise of course). Mom’s doing one at work, the lunch table people are doing one. Keith’s doing one (even though it is class room wise) I wanna give and get. Oh well I guess I’ll just have to wait ’till x-mas. I just heard someone say that candy grams are not a measure of popularity. Of course they are! Everything in school is either a measure of popularity or academic achievement (both very unjustly weighed). I’m pathetic. I just realized I’m truly the queen of pathetic. I have no life outside of Star Trek, school, and drawing, ya know? I’ll never make it after school. I’ll never be independent. Most of all I’ll never be famous or meet my crush. I might as well face it, I’ll never meet him. Never in all my life will I ever know him. Never. I’m pathetically pitiful. I’m sitting here, writing to myself, supposed to be writing something I don’t get, and I’m not, and will never be, even significant enough to be counted as a statistic. I don’t matter at all. None of my dreams will ever come true. I’ll die young and loveless and pathetic. Life is just a bunch of lies. We lie to our friends, family, peers, authority figures, those over who we have authority, our environment, even ourselves. I’m a fake, do I know anyone who isn’t a fake? How could I know? Only the bad fakes are revealed to me. With all this, I still go on. Why do I go on? To spare grief to those I love? Why bother? I’m not sparing it, just delaying it. So I can see how the world turns out? Partly, but who cares how it will turn out once I’m dead? So I don’t miss out on all the things I want see and do? Partly, but I’ll never do them anyway, I’ll just give myself more grief. Then why do I keep on living? Fear, that’s why. Because I’m afraid. Not afraid to die, but afraid to live but also afraid not to live. I’m afraid I’ll lose the only thing I ever really had. I’m afraid to end my life, because after I turn over that point there is no turning back, no remedy for the situation. Of course once I’m dead I’ll never know the difference anyway but as I’m alive, I’m too scared to take that chance. Well, I seem to have run out of space, so I’ll reread this now and surprise myself with my own insight and realisticness. 

self-esteem-self-awareness

November 30, 1992

I’m totally bored. I hate school. I hate people. I don’t hate TV. I don’t hate movies. I don’t hate drawing. I hate going to school and being at school and being on the bus and the people on the bus and the people at school. I hate Mr. Whitmore, I hate Jane, I hate everyone but my mother and brother, and Beau Gars. (my celebrity crush). I hate school. I hate all my classes. Sometimes I hate myself, not now. I  really hate Mr. Whitmore, I seriously wish he would die. I wish I could kill him. I wish I were Q. I WISH I WERE Q. I hate my life. I am so full of hate and have no way to release it. How can I release it? Maybe I’ll make a voodoo doll of Whitmore. Yeah! I wish I were Q.

                                  Yeah, so that pretty much covers that. Kind of interesting that I never hated my mother, eh? Way to eschew teenaged girl stereotypes. 

                              Mr. Whitmore was my English teacher. At one point he called on me, to comment on something in a book the class was reading, and I took my time formulating my answer, apparently too long, because he got pissed and yelled at me, and the entire class, that we must answer questions, and not simply sit there in silence. I was utterly humiliated, and that moment has remained seared in my brain as one of the most embarrassing in all of high school. I don’t remember the timelines, so I don’t know if this happened before or after, but another time, he asked me to comment on another book, and I quite honestly replied that the book had made me realize that I’d never been happy. Even though I knew this was an embarrassing thing to say, I said it anyway because I knew it would shock him, and shut him up. Even though I was indeed embarrassed, I got the desired effect, because he stammered in response, hesitantly asking the rest of the class if anyone had a similar reaction. No one responded, because of course they didn’t, but to this day I retain that as a moment of triumph over an asshole of an authority figure. In retrospect though, he wasn’t that bad. I actually had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Mr. Whitmore. I also had him for Drama, and I was basically teacher’s pet in that class. He once said, to the whole class, that I was the only student who ever understood what he was talking about. So that was nice.

                         When I say I wish I were Q, I’m of course talking about the Star Trek character, not the Bond character. I no longer wish I were omnipotent, ’cause that’d be boring, but I still love Star Trek. I’m recapping TNG these days, so head on over and check it out.

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November 10, 1992

Tuesday:
2:30 – 3:00 – take shower, blah, blah, blah
3:00 – 4:00 – watch Joan Rivers show
4:00 – 5:00 – watch taped next Generation episode
5:00 – find paper with group story I started writing; wait for inspiration
6:00 – 7:00 – have supper, tell mom about homework, get help with it
7:00 – 9:30 – watch TV
9:30 – do homework, go to bed
Research Winona Ryder
note: put gym stuff in bag
put chocolate bar in fridge, eat it while watching TV
be depressed…

                                                  I wrote all that while at school and stuck the loose leaf into my diary when I got home. It’s interesting to see that my obsession with planning my life and tracking my time began early. I recently wrote a blog post about my tracking obsession, which I believed was a new passion but I guess I’ve always been this way. I’m rather amused to see that watching the Joan Rivers show was such a priority, and I have no idea why I felt the need to research Winona Ryder, nor how I intended to do so before the advent of the internet. I also got a good chuckle out of the last line: “be depressed”. Even then I had a sense of humour about my melancholy proclivities. 

                                             And then I go on and on about my “love” for my celebrity crush. Hilariously though, I conclude with this:

If, when I’m older, I read this and it seems stupid and like a dumb crush (supposing I’m over him), I’m sorry but I really do love him. If I still love him, please excuse my saving anything so realistic.

                                         So amused by my teenaged “love”, and yet surprising self-awareness about how ridiculous it was.

God I’m depressed. If I can’t have what I really want (job wise) like in my fantasies then I want to illustrate books, and write them eventually. I would really like to write Ranmadia. Please, Nic, write it over the summer, it must be done before we forget the story.

                                        Oh, this is sad. I don’t know what I was referring to with the job that I really wanted, but even my backup plan of illustrating and writing books did not come to pass. And no, I never did write Ranmadia. It was a story my brother and I had come up with together. He narrated the story, and I responded with what the protagonist did. My brother was already GMing table-top role-playing games with his friends by this point so that’s basically what this story was, an RPG without the dice. I felt like it was such a good story, and I was so desperate to get it down on paper, and yet I never did. And now I don’t remember it at all.

Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh
To do over long weekend:
Watch Beauty and the Beast
Watch taped episodes of Young Indy
Do all homework (yeah right) no really
Paint Ranmadia thing
Draw those pictures from magazines
I hate my life and self

                                     Geez, kid, you’re such a downer!

abyss

September 25, 1992

I hate school! I thought it would be a great year, what a joke. It doesn’t matter what courses I’m taking I’m still me.

                                      The eternal problem.

And the fact that I feel nauseous every day doesn’t help. I think I’m seriously sick… let’s not speak of such unpleasantries. Excuse me while I go cry and fantasize my way to sleep.

                                    I’m not sure what this nausea was about, unless it was menstrual. Before I started taking birth control pills I got my period about every three weeks and it was brutal. I’ve been known to throw up in public places more than once because of this problem. The nausea could have also been anxiety though. When I was a child I had chronic stomach aches and when I complained about it to my mother she brought me to a doctor who told me there was nothing wrong. That was one of the first times I learned not to trust/listen to doctors (that deserves a rant of its own which I’ll save for another day). In any case, it was only thirty years later that the medical community finally acknowledged the connection between stomach pain and anxiety, especially in children. When I read a few of the articles referring to these studies the lightbulb clicked and I realized this was what I’d been suffering from my entire childhood.

October 11, 1992

Since Michelle (my sister’s friend) came over for Thanksgiving supper she had us say all the stuff we were thankful for. All I said was that I was thankful Star Trek TNG plays everyday and has a new season and that the Young Indianna Jones Chronicles plays. Pretty sad, eh?

                                    Yeah, sad. Fictional characters were, at that time, my only friends. Today I’m happy to report that I also have one or two IRL friends, so… progress!

fictional-characters-need-our-emotions-more-than-real-life-people

August 19, 1992

I did finally clean my room the other day. Last Sunday I think. It’s a great feeling knowing my room is clean. And it wasn’t such a drag doing it. I think I’ll survive.

                                      Survive what? The next 25 years of your life? Yeah, you will.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles are playing again. I’m pretty Star Trek-asized these days too. Life isn’t that bad for me now. I’m pretty into it. Pretty content. I have my dreams… I’m not dreading back to school, although I can’t say I’m looking forward to it either.

                                      Ahh to be young again, when summer vacation lasted two whole months, rather than just two weeks.

August 21, 1992

Today I found out that school stars the 27th! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Less than a week! What a shock! And due to budget cuts there is a time change. School now begins at 7:45 – this means I have to wake up at like 6:30, or 6:45. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I don’t know how I’m going to handle it! Last year I could hardly crawl out at 7:00. It could maybe zombie my way through the morning waking at 7:10. So I’ve decided to devise a plan. As soon as I get home from school, straight away I do my homework (Keith and I will force each other to do it). Then take a nap. Then wake up, have supper, watch TV, and go to bed. I think I’ll be able to manage waking so early if I stick to the plan and get that nap. I must stick to the plan. And I have to start waking earlier this week to get accustomed to it.

                                         early-riser   It was ridiculous then, and remains ridiculous now, that teenagers must wake up so freakin’ early to get to school. Plenty of studies have confirmed that adolescents  are natural night-owls and do better in school if they are allowed to start at a later time. Yet our society is not structured for families, or children. Our society is structured for rich old men. Why should any office have start and end times? Why can’t people just work when it’s convenient for them? 

 

                                           In any case, my plan half worked. I did take naps every afternoon but only because I was constantly exhausted. I was an insomniac at this age and never managed to fall asleep at a decent hour, regardless of when I went to bed, so I was sleep deprived for most of my adolescence. I think this contributed to my depression at that time.

This has got to be the ultimate year.

                                      It was not the ultimate year.

I’m not taking any math courses. I think I might gt gas permeable contacts some time this year.

                                       I tried gas permeable and they were incredibly painful. My mom was pissed that I refused to wear them.

I’m 16. As long as I do things to make myself near happy (because you realize happiness is impossible for me) I’ll be alright. I’ve gotten to my last year of high school, it’s gotta be great.

                                     It was not great.

I’ve got to start making things happen for myself.

                                 I did not make things happen for myself.

Maybe without math I’ll like school this year.

                                 I did not like school that year.

You know it’s weird this intimate connection with body and mind. When I think of going back to school i feel a weight in my stomach holding me down, making me sad. When I think of vacation the weight is gone and it’s the opposite. I’m lifted somehow. This definitely makes one like the prospect of vacation.

                                Yes, definitely.

I guess I gotta go. This entry was too concrete.

                              Indeed.

I will always love you

On September 28, 1987, something monumental happened. Something that would change the world, and would begin one of the most profound love affairs in my entire life. Star Trek: The Next Generation aired its premiere episode.

I was only eleven years old, but I was instantly hooked. TNG aired for seven seasons which means I was eighteen when it ended but by then Deep Space Nine had begun and soon, Voyager would come onto the scene. These three shows carried me into my twenty-fifth year, so Star Trek was a part of my life during my pre-teen years, my entire adolescence, and the formative years of my young adulthood. It is not hyperbole to say this franchise had a huge effect on me and helped to shape me into the woman I am today. I would even say these shows were partially responsible for raising me. That’s a scary thought when you rewatch the early seasons of TNG today, and realize how racist and sexist they were (I’m looking at you,  Code of Honor), but for the time, the show was revolutionary and the ’80s version of woke.

I’ve already written about how TNG came into my life at the exact right time; I was lonely and looking for something to believe in. Even though I didn’t have many friends in real life, the crew of the Enterprise D became my new friends – my surrogate family. They were a group of people who cared about each other, and all supported one another. They were the dream team and I wanted nothing more than to be part of that team. From the first moment I was instantly enamored with Deanna Troi because she was empathic – the premiere episode even implied that she was telepathic – and at the time I was so insecure and fearful of people that I wanted nothing more than to be able to read their minds, just so I could get an idea of how I was supposed to behave. In time I developed a crush on Data and I realize now that this is because he represented something safe. As someone incapable of emotions, he’d also be incapable of hating me, as I hated myself.

For young me, TNG was a beacon of hope, something for me to rely on as my life got increasingly difficult to deal with. As I fell into a depression during my adolescence, TNG was often the only thing getting me through the week, and cliffhangers like The Best of Both Worlds got me through entire summers. Looking for more of the same, I attempted to watch the original Star Trek series, hoping it would hold some of that magic I longed for. Unfortunately, it didn’t, and I was sadly disappointed. Just as the spin-offs don’t always hold up when viewed through a modern lens, teenaged me from the ‘90s couldn’t handle the overt sexism of the ‘60s series. (I’ve rewatched TOS as an adult though, and found it quite fortifying).

Still, I remained profoundly protective of the franchise, and deeply in love. Even as, throughout all the shows’ runs, I was often annoyed, (mostly with the lack of gender parity and meaningful stories for its rare female characters), I was also consistently moved, and watching the shows mostly remained a joyful experience.

As time has gone on, I’ve come to accept other shortcomings of the franchise, like its spotty understanding of science, and inconsistent ideas about future technologies. Writers from the 20th century can’t be blamed for guessing wrong about the future, and how our species would evolve, but watching the show now isn’t so much nostalgic as it is hilarious. And that’s fine. It’s still fun to watch, even if every episode needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and a gigantic helping of suspension of disbelief. And when watched within the context of the time it was made, the show can still hold valuable lessons, and serve as a teaching tool. Star Trek, as with all good science fiction, has always been its best when the storytelling was an allegory and not simply shoot-em-up space battles.

So I can’t blame fans for wanting to revive the franchise but I would argue that the modern reboot absolutely did NOT recapture that old Star Trek magic. They’re passable movies in their own right, but they are not Star Trek movies. They actually hold more in common with Star Wars, in that they are more action-oriented than allegorical. Again, that’s fine for people who are into that sort of thing, but for me, it’s not enough. What I’ve realized though, is that it’ll never be enough, that the old Trek magic simply cannot be recaptured because modern audiences are now too smart.

Ok, maybe not everyone is too smart, but generally speaking, as a culture, or at least for those of us who follow advancements in science, we’ve come to see that the tech as shown in Star Trek makes no sense. Some of it is way too advanced and some is not advanced enough. Today, in 2017, we have smartphones that seem more advanced than the PADDs the crew of the Enterprise walked around with. Why are crew members constantly seen walking around to deliver information when even today a simple email will do? And you’re telling me that in the 24th-century people still only live into their hundreds? And genetic engineering is banned? There’s no cure for blindness? And nanotechnology is seen as novel? And women are still expected to take their husband’s names?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Again, a lot of this comes down to the time in which the series was made, but that’s exactly why it can’t still be made today. We know better. Handcuffing writers with the limitations of the established Trek tech seems like a particularly cruel form of torture. I would actually argue that writing any sci-fi today is similarly difficult, and current space-faring shows like Dark Matter and Killjoys are also laughably unrealistic, but at least they aren’t also hampered by decades of highly limiting (and sometimes internally inconsistent) cannon.

The only wise and merciful, thing to do is to let Star Trek die. Let it rest in dignity as a much-loved franchise that was good for its time. Leave it the hell alone! But no, much as there was coffee in that nebula, there is money to be made, so of course, they’re taking another kick at the can.

Which brings us to my ultimate purpose in writing this blog post. I am deeply apprehensive about the new Trek series set to premiere this year, Star Trek: Discovery. We all know it’ll be a shit show because how can it not be? The producers have already admitted that they are redesigning the Klingons yet again, because hey, if the Klingons need anything it’s even more confusion regarding their turtle heads or lack thereof.

I am hopeful about the black woman lead but disappointed by the continued lack of gender and racial parity. A bit of intertronning reveals that the show is still 69% white and only 30% female. *sigh*

I’m not reading up too much about Discovery in order to avoid spoilers, so I can’t say much about it yet except to say that yes, I will of course be watching it. I’ve even started rewatching older Trek in an effort to get back into that Trek mood, and so far it’s working. I’m very much worried about what Discovery will do to a franchise that has already taken way too many hits, but two things are certain: I will absolutely love it and absolutely hate it.

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