longing in the time of trauma

an annotated excerpt from my 2009 journal

2009 macbook selfie

Reading back on my high school journals puts me in a weird place. It makes me feel tender. I cry every time, sometimes because I am reminded of painful moments I’ve lived and other times because the externalization of life reminds me to be in awe of it—its magnitude, the passage of time, the impossibility of the past, the irreversibility of it. That tenderness is always part of my personal experience with reading these entries, but it’s also so, so much fun. I get swept up in it. I revisit my life like it’s a YA novel I loved a really long time ago. It’s comforting and exciting. I felt so much back then.

thank you for reading <3

*note for those of you who read via email!! idk if the footnotes will work on email so if they don’t pls click the title of this post and it’ll take you to Substack and it should work from there. and if you’re on your phone and the footnotes get cut off, flip your phone horizontal lol ok sorry for the awkward note i don’t understand technology, here we go~

---

Currently Listening To: Cobra Starship, ¡Viva La Cobra!

Thurs, Jan 22, 2009, 1:25am

So this can’t be long because it’s one fucking thirty and I have to read The Awakening (but let’s be real, you and I both know I’m not actually going to do that). But like.

My life.

Second semester started today. Second semester: no gym. HELL YES. Instead of gym? Psychology. WITH MY HOT TEACHER MR. W.¹ So I walk into Psych this morning feeling totally awesome and kind of giddy and repulsive. So I’m already sitting there before the bell rings, grinning and just like, ready to absorb the sexiness that is Mr. W. And like, guess who walks into the classroom.

J! So fucking random! Right when he walks in we, of course, make eye contact. It actually was sort of borderline staring. Like, definitely way longer than I was comfortable with. But he looked so good. I wish I didn’t become such a [redacted]² every time I get around him.

But! I didn’t write about this: like, two, three weeks ago he told K in a drunken blur (slur? what’s the saying? haha) that he heard about how I used to like him (AWESOME just what I want him knowing! That I admire him from afar!) and he totally thinks I’m hot but by the time he found out it was too late and I already didn’t like him anymore. UM, HELLO J? YOU ARE PERFECT WHY WOULD I EVER STOP LIKING YOU.

But anyway, I guess that sort of gives me some confidence (confidence, HA!) but like, not really because he was drunk and probably didn’t even know what he was talking about. COOL, ALCOHOL. Thanks for existing!!! Love you!!

Anyway, in conclusion: Mr. W + J = me having feelings that are not okay to have at 8am.³

Thurs, Jan 22, 2009, 3:17pm

Fuck you and fuck your alcohol. Two days in a row? Really? Is that really where we’re at again?

Cool. Thanks.

God please be safe getting L from school. Please stop drinking and driving. Please let my babysitting job be cancelled. I need to whither away in my bed. Let me wallow. I can’t do this. I need to leave. Why is this happening? Why won’t this stop happening?

Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.⁴

Sat, Jan 24, 2009, 1:52am

I don’t even know why I’m writing.

I sort of hate everything lately. Well, not everything.

Today sucked because mom was all bitchy because of Thursday. “I drink because you guys don’t clean the dishes or put away your clothes.” That kind of thing. All mom and dad do anymore is fight. But then G and J came over and everything was fun and fine and I forgot about everything. Funny how that works.⁵

Currently Listening To: Dashboard Confessional, Dusk & Summer

Sun, Feb 1, 2009, 10:43pm

• omg my life

• I’m going to bullet this entry to trick myself into thinking it will be a quick update because I really have to do homework

• no but like seriously I should really be studying for math

• too bad J > math!

• Okay so. I actually have a lot to write, fuck. Anyway the past week he and I have been like kind of talking. Only to the point where I somehow get a few funny sentences out of my stupid mouth and he laughs at me. Which is awesome, actually.

• Yesterday A and I went out on a “date” (he’s gay, just my type)⁶ and I guess he was talking about how excited he was for it on Friday, when he was hanging out with J. So J knew A and I were hanging out. And so me and A are at Olive Garden⁷ when he gets a call from J saying, “My parents are out of town and I’m having people over if you and your date want to stop by.”

• Flash to me freaking the fuck out.

• So we go over there and it’s random ass people, like S, T, N (when I saw her I was just like COOL there goes any chance of him ever liking me if I’m being subconsciously compared to N), K, M, and some juniors.

• Your name is pounding through my veins, can’t you hear how it is sung?⁸

• So we’re all just like chilling and J’s playing fucking beer pong when he says, “Lindsey, are you—you’re not drinking?” (uh, I forgot to mention there was lots of alcohol present). And I was just like uhhhh stutter stutter no? And then C was all, “Do you drink at all?” and I was like “…….no.”

• So cool, I’m a huge loser.⁹

• The rest of the night was really chill, just hanging around and talking. I was wearing my Jesus bracelet¹⁰ and he saw it and was like, “I have one of those! Let me go get it.” And he went upstairs for like five minutes and came back down empty-handed and was all, “I couldn’t find it!” And I was like, “You have to! So we can be twins!” and he was like, “Are you serious? Okay.” and then started walking back upstairs, and I was like “omg no not now, I meant later!”¹¹

• I don’t know, he’s hot

• SHIT I have more to say but I’m getting so tired

• Oh but oh yeah K told him I like him AGAIN and he was like “What?!” And then T walked into the room and J was like “Dude, Lindsey thinks I’m cute.” haha Godddd. And T was like, “Um yeah you should have known that already,” referring to the last time K told him, and he was like, “What, why??” So haha I guess he doesn’t even remember the first time. Which T told me today involved J calling me “many words meaning attractive” and saying he wanted to “get on that.”¹² hahaha oh my God. But idk I do such a great job unconvincing myself of all good things¹³, like he was drunk so maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about. And apparently after me and A left yesterday, K and M and J all smoked weed and like, what the fuck, is he some kind of weird alcoholic stoner or something? Does that shit happen often? Like maybe we wouldn’t even have much in common if he’s like that and I’m like…me. Blah I don’t know.¹⁴ A said J has never had a girlfriend though. That’s cute. He’s cute. OH and he waved at me at musical today and it made me so happy, haha I’m so lame.¹⁵

1. I went to Catholic school and nearly all of our teachers were old (some were literally priests or Brothers). This man was maybe like, 28? I have no idea. But he had this wild head of curly black hair and kind of bulbous biceps under his shirt sleeves. He was 0% my type but he was young and I so desperately wanted to believe he was hot. I just googled him. He’s okay, lol.

2. I was gonna just cut this out but listen, I’m human! It was 2009 and I was using words I now regret! When I read back on them in old journal entries I feel shame. But maybe I can reframe the shame as gratitude—I know better now, and I’m grateful to know better.

3. Crushes were everything to me in high school. I needed a crush present at all times!! Boys were a source of joy—I loved longing for them. I loved looking at them. They turned the world technicolor. I loved how their shoulder blades moved under their uniform polos. I loved how their khakis hung low on their hips. Sometimes I think my Self formed as a reaction to the boys that shaped it.

4. In the planner where I wrote down all my homework assignments, I also marked X’s on the days my mom drank. I did it to try to detect patterns—like, “she drank three days in a row this week so surely she won’t drink tonight” or “last week she didn’t drink on Friday so maybe she won’t this week.” This must have been a point where she was doing better, given I was mad that she drank two days in a row. Reading this entry now is stark to me. It was written only a sleep and a school day after the previous one. How different the tone is. I don’t think I could drive yet, and I didn’t know what to do other than just let her pick my sister up from school even though I knew she was driving drunk. She somehow never once got a DUI. When I think about how I had to babysit a neighbor after writing this, how I had to take care of someone else’s children while worrying about my mom taking care of her own—I am floored by how emotionally resilient this version of me was. That I navigated all of this at seventeen.

5. I honestly don’t remember my mom blaming her drinking on us kids like this. I think she usually took responsibility. She was attending meetings on and off during this time, trying to get better. I am glad I documented the way that friendships were a salve for me at this time: my high school friends probably saved my life.

6. I don’t know this at the time but J is gay too, so I really am not joking—just my type.

7. Suburban high school non-residential hot spots included Olive Garden, Steak & Shake, the Wendy’s parking lot, Jewel Osco, this random Boba Tea place, the inside of moving cars, and school playgrounds at night.

8. This was technically doodled in the margin of my journal entry but I don’t know how to convey that digitally lol—it’s a lyric from Dusk & Summer, which I was apparently feeling so profoundly that I had to get it down. I loved listening to music while writing. Music, Friends, and Boys was my high school Holy Trinity.

9. Fifteen years later, I again have such compassion for this past version of me. How did I manage to stand my ground when everyone else was drinking? Alcohol was so complex at this time. At home, it was evil, it ruined my life, it ruined my family. But at parties with friends, it was exciting. It might stir up drama or make us laugh til we pee our pants, it might get my crush to confess he likes me too. Either way, it changed the temperature of the night. Just in a different direction.

10. I had one of these because Jesse Lacey had one, but also because I was Catholic and kind of proud of that, like I thought it was cool to believe in God or maybe I kind of needed to believe in God.

11. I miss being so excited about mundane interactions like this. I wanted to write down every word he said to me just because I wanted to think about him. Journaling about him was like eating a piece of cake slowly, dragging my mouth along fork tines.

12. I don’t talk to J anymore but I think about him sometimes. He called me maybe two years after this and came out to me. I don’t know if he knew he was gay when he was in high school. I don’t know if he thought he had a crush on me or if he sort of did, maybe not sexually or romantically but some secret third thing. Or maybe he didn’t have any degree of crush on me and I was a stroke of good luck: a girl who he could date to convince others or himself of his straightness. I have no idea. But I think it must have been difficult, to be confused but trying to blend in, trying to act the part.

13. I still do this; it’s hard for me to submit to pleasure. I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

14. It was hard for me to understand that you could drink without being an alcoholic, you could smoke without being a stoner. I was so afraid of the rift that could happen between me and friends, or me and J, if they all drank and smoked but I didn’t. I ended up having my first drink a few months after this. I don’t think alcohol changed my friendships, but I am grateful that we shared so many years without it. We learned how to have fun and be honest, sober. Maybe that’s why I’m still close with a lot of my high school friends.

15. J asked me to be his girlfriend a few weeks later and we dated for three months. By “dated” I mean we went to sushi one time and kissed like, maybe five times. He put his tongue in my mouth maybe two of those and I thought it tasted like a dead worm and I laughed and pulled away because it was so awkward. On my eighteenth birthday my mom got drunk and I called my best friend. She encouraged me to call J and open up to him about it. By that time I could drive, and for some reason I was parked in my high school parking lot, crying. I called him. I remember him asking if my dad knew my mom drinks. That was when I understood that he would never get it. He couldn’t fathom the severity. But he was so sweet. He tried. I’m grateful for him, the spark of joy he gave me. The lifeline of longing for something I could actually get while longing for a home life I would never have. I am grateful also for the person I was, for how much I navigated at such a young age. I didn’t think I was doing a good job then. I wish I could go back in time and tell her.