Diary Excerpts

Looking back over my old diaries, it's painfully obvious to me how in denial I was. A few snippets from the old days (names have been changed):

10 years old

"Guess what? Cassie Harding is trying to steal Jilly away from me. She skips me in line, sleeps in the same tent with her at Girl Scout Camp, sits next to her at lunch, and more! But she's pretty much given up now, since I fight back."

14 years old

"Camp was so much better than last year! Unfortunately, I now have more evidence to support my sex theory of myself. That I'm a lesbian, I mean. I've always suspected it, because I hate boys and now I love Rachel. But then, it's not as if thinking about girls naked turns me on either. So... I dunno. Oh well, it's not important right now."

17 years old

"[My Spanish teacher, Juanita] was confiding in me, and that made me feel honored. She wasn’t seeing me as a student at that moment – I was being viewed as a friend. The fact that she could let down her defenses in front of me – to curse, to complain, to just talk uninhibitedly – is something that I treasure. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness, perhaps not. But I appreciated that, because I see her as much more of a friend than a teacher, and it was encouraging to think that maybe she was beginning to think of me as the same... I hope that I really was useful to her, and not just an annoyance... She also said that Mitch was the most lucid person in second period most of the time, although he 'has his moments'. I’ll confess that that made me feel a little jealous. I know this isn’t a Competition for Juanita’s Affection or anything – I think it's just that I just broke up with the guy, you know. ...I think I followed her as we left the parking lot... I had hopes of maybe catching up to her, but it never happened. I wonder where she lives? West side, I know, but where? I don’t know why I wonder that; I just do. Makes me feel kind of like a stalker. LOL! As if. No way. I think she’s near Sterling High, though."

18 years old

"I’m doing that thing that I always do, which is checking out the competition. I’m getting worried that [my Dutch teacher, Annemarie] likes Steve more than me, which is SO elementary and horrible of me. I’ve always been a couple of years behind everyone else emotionally, and now I’m worried that I’m WAY behind, because only six-year-olds say “You like her better than me.” It’s a baby thing.
But I made sure to tell her today that I’m going to Utrecht in the fall semester, so that she doesn’t use Steve's program as a reason to like him more.
Okay, this is getting really stupid."
...
"I feel really shitty and I don’t know why. It has something to do with Annemarie but I don’t know what. Is it because I didn’t sing for her when she asked? Or because she went off with Steve? Or a combination of both? I think that’s what it is – I think I’m jealous, and that makes me even madder because I'm supposed to be mature enough to not have these stupid fixations anymore. Sometimes I think I’m just as crazy as the next person but I’m smart enough to know what the hell's going on. Like, maybe I’d be stalking her right now if I were a average person, but I’m intelligent enough to be able to recognize that and tell myself not to do it. Maybe I’m just as fucked up as anyone in a mental hospital but I’m just more in tune with myself. Oh, I don't know. I just have to stop thinking about all this. I don’t know what my problem is."
...
"Annemarie admitted something that I’d suspected - she said, 'You can’t tell anyone - because I really like Steve.' And I could tell by the way she said it and how she looked at me that she meant as more than a friend. I'd suspected that before, but never called her on it... I'm jealous, I admit it. She pays more attention to him than to me. Like in Fat Tuesday’s when she said to him, 'It might sound stupid, but I wish that I could talk to you in Dutch [her native language], even just for ten minutes.' But now I know that a lot of it is because she’s attracted to him in spite of herself, and at the same time, I’m glad I’m a girl, because she’ll tell me things that she wouldn’t tell him, and we have less of a chance of our friendship being disrupted by sexual/romantic tension. Even though she did comment in Fat Tuesdays about having wondered 'what it would be like with a girl'. But I think all girls wonder that. Maybe guys don’t, but I think all girls do. It doesn't mean we’re gay, or even bisexual – we just think about things like that. I know what she means."

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I sort of stopped writing about things like that during my last three years of college -- I was dating Dutch guy after Dutch guy in an attempt to be 'fulfilled' by someone, anyone -- but now, at age 24, all I can say is OMG, how blind can a girl be?!

My only defense is that I think the idea of being sexually attracted to women scared me so much when I was starting to figure it out -- see above, age 14 -- that I ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction, and thus put myself through a lot of confusion and (unrecognized) heartache. It's like with the throat swab for a strep test when I was six -- it made me throw up, because I was sick, and so for ten years after that I was terrified of throat cultures for no good reason. Our minds can do some really wacky things.

Do any of you other RSGs have old diary entries, etc. like that, old thoughts and justifications that make you want to slap yourself in the forehead and go duuuuuuuh? I sure hope I'm not the only self-induced idiot here. :)