#i also found a notebook with a single diary entry from when i was 13 that included em dashes? as if i needed proof that i've always been | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

takaraphoenix · 5 years

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I just did a bit of timetravel, or well a journey to the past. This entry is 100% self-indulgent and probably rather boring unless you want to snoop around in a teenaged!Phoe’s mind.

So I was cleaning up my desk a little and I have this little wooden jewelry box where I keep my frequently used jewelry, my pocket watch, hair clips, those things. Every now and again, I clean it out to retire what I haven’t been using frequently for a while. And I just did that and put that jewelry into my bigger box in my cupboard. When I did that however, I found... something else I keep stowed away in there.

My old diaries.

And I mean old. From 2000 to 2007. The oldest of those was literally still from when I was in elementary school.

And, I know I told this story before at one point, how I used to pretend to be totally straight in fifth grade and pretended to have a crush on the boy everyone had a crush on and how I went all out on that, with a diary entry with his name in sparkly ink and photos of him and hearts and all. Because, you know, girls are snoopy bitches so making a diary entre guaranteed all your girls would find it and then spread the gossip around. (Secrets do not exist in high school.)

What I had however forgotten however was that after my coming out, I tore the pages out and tried to burn them. But that was a bit of a mess so I now found those torn-out half-burned pages and stared at 13 year old me’s handiwork.

(face blurred because, ya know, obviously)

See, this is part of the reason why I can’t get behind that female characters in media can not be lesbians if they have been “in love” with a guy before. Because confused and frightened lesbians are rather convincing at pretending to be straight.

What was a real trip though was finding our old “friendship diary” - I don’t know if that’s a thing other countries do, or if it’s even still a thing kids here do, but when I was a teen this was super huge. A group of friends sharing one diary, and each day, it’d go home with another person to leave today’s entry. Over time, me and my five best friends had three of those. I got to keep the first one, I don’t even remember who has the other two. I’m... not even in contact with any of those girls anymore. So it was really weird seeing that again.

It was also slightly concerning, because among the entries, there was one dedicated to a “sexy photoshoot”, where two of my friends posed in bras and rather revealing. They were... 14 at the time. And that was pre “everyone prints their pictures themselves”. This was “you hand in the film-roll at a drug store and then can pick up the printed photos”. And this is a book that was handed over in school so it was also regularly stolen.

And I think the point of this is: Damn am I glad that teenaged internet access back then was limited to basically the high schooler version of facebook (it was all pink. Gaaah). Because today, those pictures would have somehow ended up on the internet and you never get rid of that again.

There was one more book I found in there. My old story planning book.

I forgot that I used to do all of that by hand. Today, I have a folder with exel documents that contain various spreadsheets with those notes. Back then, notebook.

Detailed plans for fanfiction, ironing out of timelines and teams, sketches of floor-plans for their houses, character sheets and profiles, plot points and notes. All of them Beyblade fics, since, well, that was the fandom I was in back then.

And tucked away between the pages were some single sheets of beginnings of stories and poetry. I found a poem that I still think is pretty cool. I forgot just how much I used to love poetry. I loved writing poems more than writing stories.

But I haven’t really written a poem since I switched from German to English, because German is a very poetic, flowery language, while English is so... cold and factual. So many English words derive from Latin, while German has much more metaphorical words for things in most cases.

I think I should start writing more in German again, at least poetry wise. I really miss it. Didn’t even... realize I missed it.

Now, amusing and nostalgic things weren’t all I found among the books.

I really can’t recommend going through the diary you wrote during your most suicidal phase in life. Though I have to admit it was a little... It kind of made me feel good? I mean, good about myself. To see how far I’ve come since then, how hard I worked on getting better on my own.

So, I don’t know what the point of this post is, but I highly recommend finding your old notebooks! Because it’s really wild to look 15+ years back into the past and see what a person you were then vs what a person you’re now.

#about me #Phoe's Personal Stuff

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