Tag: adolescence

August 20, 1991

February 27, 2017

Tuesday – Marlene is going to come here by bus and we are going to have fun. (she will come Friday and stay ’till Monday). We will go to Fairview and movies and La Ronde.

                                    I love how determined I was to have fun. I sound like an android. “We WILL accomplish this thing you call fun.” FYI, Fairview is a mall, and La Ronde an amusement park.

Speaking of La Ronde. My brother came into my room this morning saying he was going to La Ronde with his friend (he borrowed 20 bucks) so he wasn’t here to let in Bob (our stupid worker dude who is putting a third bathroom in our house) so I was sleeping and in my dream the doorbell rings and the other girl goes to get it and it keeps ringing and I slowly drift awake and hear the doorbell, by the time I figured out what was going on it stopped ringing. I fell back asleep again and then net time I woke up I think it was mom who came in the house. I fell asleep again and what woke me up this time (at 2:00 p.m.) was music so loud I thought the singer was in my room! I heard Bob and his little helper singing along (ooh, my ears!) then it sounded like they were in the kitchen eating or something. Like what are we paying them for?! Anyway, Bob the idiot doesn’t know I’m here and I don’t want him to, so I’ll stay upstairs and sneak around as best I can. I’m starved, oh well, I need to go on a diet anyway, and need to use the bathroom but I want to wait ’till they are in the garage and it doesn’t seem to be happening. Gosh, I hate this, why do I have so many goddamned problems?

                              I was cringing in pain as I transcribed this, but then the lament about having so many problems made me laugh. So here’s the deal: I’ve got social anxiety, but as a kid I didn’t know what it was. I just knew I was afraid of people. I was deeply ashamed of it, but afraid nonetheless. And because I didn’t understand what it was about, it was all the worse. I sound like a spoiled brat, hiding in my room, sleeping in until all hours, refusing to open the door for our contractor, forcing my mother to leave work to do it, and from an outside perspective I can see how ridiculous it seems. But I didn’t remain hidden because I was bratty, I was truly afraid. Afraid of what, you might ask? Any interaction that I wasn’t prepared for. I was panic-stricken and frozen in fear.

Even today I do silly things like this. As recently as a month ago I was in the bathroom taking selfies when the doorbell rang. I knew my significant other was home so I let him answer it. (I don’t answer doors when I’m alone unless I’m expecting a delivery). It was our contractor and he came in and proceeded to have an unnecessarily lengthy conversation with my SO. I figured I’d wait them out but… after half an hour it became ridiculous. They were right outside the bathroom door so I knew I’d startle the contractor if I suddenly appeared, but it felt equally awkward to stay hidden. I chose to stay hidden, and basically stared at myself, chastising myself for being so weird as I waited for him to leave. Oh well. Some things never change.

School starts the 28th. Maybe something good will happen then, maybe I’ll be popular and have a great boyfriend. SIGH.

                             I guess I still do this sort of thing too, i.e., hope for the impossible. Every time we hire someone new at work (which happens shockingly often) I think maybe it’ll be someone totally awesome and we’ll become fast friends and conquer the world together. But then it just turns out to be another utterly normal human being and I’m disappointed again. Still, I’ve made some progress. I’m much more capable now of enjoying the company of normal humans than I was when I was a teenager.

August 6, 1991

February 13, 2017

Tuesday – We have been back for a few weeks or one and a half or whatever and I have got to call Genevieve and Jane.

It’s a wonder I’ve ever managed to maintain any friendships in my life since I’ve always been utterly incapable of using telephones, due to anxiety. Nowadays we have texting, which is a life-saver, but back then the thought of picking up a phone was panic-inducing. I doubt I ever called either Genevieve or Jane.

I got a letter from Marlene and am going to make her a comic of Mia + Avril.

                                     Mia and Avril were the alter egos my friend Marlene and I made up.  These alternate versions of us were, unfortunately, no more exciting than the real deal. I’m not sure if I ever made this promised comic. Somehow I doubt it.

On the vacation we went (on the last day) to Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, it was cool! And we also did some mini-put on the way back. In the States we also did mini=put, and I got a shirt, denim, and dad got a whole lot of stuff…

                                  Riveting. But you know, those family vacations we took when my siblings and I were kids were a lot of fun. All things considered we were a pretty functional family. We got along for the most part and all had a good time. Even my sister, who was, and continues to be, the black sheep because she’s more sensitive and emotional than the rest of us, was a good sport about those family vacays and the cheesy things we did. Good for us.

August 16, 1991 – Friday – Marlene called me yesterday and said for me to call her (answering machine got it) so we could arrange meeting before school starts. I had a dream last night. In it I met a guy… SIGH. He had shoulder length blon curly hair, gray-blue eyes and was he cute. His name was Alexandre, we were on my driveway, there was snow, a bunch of other stuff happened but I only want to remember him… SIGH.

                                Yes, sigh indeed. I actually remember that dream. It wasn’t exiting in any way but back then dreams and fantasies were pretty much the only things staving off my crippling loneliness. Real interactions certainly weren’t helpful.

School starts the 28th!

                               I don’t think this exclamation point was excitement so much as dread. Actually, I probably was excited to be starting at a new school, because there was room for hope. So even though it was a completely unnecessary move, I think it was a good thing for me to switch schools half way through my high school career. Even that short-lived hope probably helped me sleep at night throughout the summer.

I switched because my friend Jane wanted to and since (or so I thought) she was my only friend, I decided to go with her. Academically I justified it because the new school offered art in grade 10, while my old school didn’t. Looking back I sometimes wonder how things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t changed schools. I hated my first high school because I was lonely, but in retrospect I was well-liked and had people to sit with at lunch. At my new school I just tagged along with Jane, disliked her new friends, and felt even more awkward than ever. Honestly, in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered where I was because my environment wasn’t the problem, I was.

Ultimately switching schools was the right move because it forced my younger brother to then go to that school (it was easier on my parents to have both kids at the same place [my sister had moved on to college by then]), and he ended up making life-long friends there. So you’re welcome, Keith!

 

July 19, 1991

January 30, 2017

3:20 p.m. It’s Friday. We left yesterday at like 8:00 in the a.m. We did some shopping in North Conway in New Hampshire USA. We passed through there to do some illegal shopping then we crossed the border and slept in St-Steven New-Brunswick. The motel we stayed in was disgusting. It was boiling, sticking, smelly and everyone snored. In the morning when everyone took showers I almost died, it sounded like an airlock. I got hardly any sleep, so I slept in the car. Now we are in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Driving to Louisbourg. Tomorrow should be fun visiting the fortress. Bye.

                                            I always have trouble sleeping in foreign environments. By now I’ve figured out that I just don’t travel well but at the time I hadn’t put it together yet.

Monday, July 22, 1991 – We stayed at a bed & breakfast Friday. Keith and I stayed in a room that looked major lived in… Saturday we went to the fortress of Louisbourg reconstructed to look like 1744. I loved it. It’s all on film.

                                          It’s on video, and since VHS is now obsolete, no one will have to endure the torture of watching the painfully boring videos my father/brother/I took.

I tripped and hurt my right hand, the skin is gone, it kills, it looks like I was shot.

                                       I still have the scar. Still kind of looks like I got shot.

We stayed in an ok place. Sunday we drove, went on a ferry. (I am reading a really good book called Another Shore set in Louisbourg). We met the Potters, the had lobster, me a gross sub. I am now waiting in our hotel room for the others to come back. We have to be out b 11:00, it’s 10:50! I am taking a hyper, my hand kills…

                                      The Potters were a family we hung out with in those days. They had three children, the eldest of whom was a hellion. There was always something not quite right about that kid, frighteningly so. And indeed, he ended up in jail. That’s why I never buy it when people say troubled kids are just “going through a phase”. Take red flags seriously! Mental illness, or even just emotional issues can be detected early. Don’t ignore the signs.

Thursday, July 25, 1991 – They came at 11:30, no good explanation.

                                 I still remember the stress of this situation. I stayed in the hotel in the morning while my family went out to do things because I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. Then I woke up and worried about where they were. I took the check-out time very seriously and was panicked that the hotel manager would come to kick me out, and I wouldn’t know what to do without my parents. This is the perfect example of how anxiety has played a featured role in my life. At that time we didn’t call it anxiety, and I just thought I was a freak, and I tried to hide my failures. I didn’t tell my parents how worried I’d been, or why, as I knew they’d be dismissive at best, mocking at worst. At least now that I recognize the root of the problem, life is easier, because I can set up my life to avoid such situations, and if they are unavoidable I can still deal, because just knowing what’s going on makes it a lot easier to power through.

I can’t remember where we stayed on Monday night, but we had a nice cottage Tuesday and Wednesday. tonight and tomorrow we have another cottage. Also nice, but smaller beds. We saw the wax museum, a bit disappointing. We went to the beach. It’s really beautiful, full of red rocks and cliffs, we skipped rocks and collected stones. I got a sunburn the first day, yesterday. Today we went but I cam back soon, too windy, I took a shower, what a joke, it was pathetic. Tonight we saw the musical Anne of Green Gables, it was good.

                                     This was in Prince Edward Island. I still remember that legendary sunburn. It’s interesting that my parents never told their three shockingly pale kids to wear sunscreen. I mean, yeah, it was the ’80s and ’90s and no one really thought about that stuff but still. Sunscreen existed. Why didn’t we use it? Why didn’t anyone care? I think in that time period people still believed that a sunburn was a preamble to a tan and a tan was still seen as healthy. Today I’m extremely worried about skin cancer. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. Now I always protect myself from the sun but most of the damage has already been done. And it’s not paranoia either, as my father has recently been treated for skin cancer.