Friday, September 16, 2011

My Life Revolves Around Him...

and I might die if he doesn't reciprocate or if he does but then he leaves me.

Sounding familiar?

I've done my share of deriding this situation in YA books.  That I wouldn't want my daughters to emulate that as a role model.

Re-reading my journals looking for whatever thoughts I put to paper following 9/11 made me absolutely cringe.

Every single entry is a laundry list of the random things that went on in relation to boys.  Me reading too much into situations, me trying to contrive ways of being noticed by the latest crush, etcetera.

And I realized something.

I was that YA heroine whose life revolved around a boy.

And that scared me.  There are times my journal entries haven't changed that much since those days.  Recent times.

But then there are the gems of journal entries where I'm actually looking outside myself.

I don't know where those are but surely they must exist, right?  I can't still be stuck as a teenager in an adult's body?

Maybe in some ways I do still have that sixteen year old inside me.  But I know I've changed and grown.  For one thing I no longer diagram movements of the boys I'm crushing on.  (Seriously, I diagrammed.  No lie.)  For another, my journal entries aren't nearly as epic as they used to be.  (I've had journal entries that went on for pages and pages.)

Re-reading my journals shows that in some ways I have changed and grown yet in some I haven't really.  I do still use my journal to (over)analyze (to death) when I'm worried/wondering if a boy likes me.  But then I also really use my journal to let out all my frustrations and worries and such.  Reading through some of them is like reading a roadmap to major decisions.

So, deride the trope as I may have in the past, I guess I need to be a bit more understanding.  Because I'm more Bella Swan than I realized, care to admit, or am comfortable with.

What about you?

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like you're cut out to write YA! Life has a funny way of revealing these things about us, I think. I realize some strangely scary and embarrassing things about myself all the time through my fiction. I keep a journal, but it's mostly lists of stuff that has happened. That's kind of lame. :(

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  2. I think the insecurities Bella has is one of the things that draws people to the Twilight series. We've all been there, or are there. I wish I wrote more journal entries as a high schooler, I think it would be interesting to see how I've changed, if at all.

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  3. Just recently I was leafing through my journals from high school. You have a point there, maybe it doesn't apply to every teenage girl, but I did it too, and most of my friends...my guess is, luckily, we didn't have more serious things to worry about.

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  4. Reading past journals is always an interesting experience for me. Most of the time I am rolling my eyes at myself. Good thing we grow up and get more experience.

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  5. Yeah, so I think we're all Bella Swan on some level. I may not be her anymore, but the books definitely pulled that out of me. Maybe that's why they're so dang popular.

    Nice post!

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  6. Michelle, I suppose so! I've definitely lately been getting more YA friendly ideas but someday I do want my adult stuff published. Journal keeping is never lame. I'm trying to be better at writing about the important stuff rather than the fluff of life, but sometimes I'd rather remember the fluff than the trials. Thanks for coming by!

    Bethany, you're absolutely right. I think it shows how much I've changed that her insecurities bug me so bad. But then I remember I'm not exactly the target audience of those books and I'm a little better with the books. Thanks for stopping by!

    Ivana, that's very true. I don't know that anyone else around me kept journal entries quite like that. I do think that sometimes I wrote the fluff to ignore the hard stuff I was going through. Thanks for commenting!

    Angie, I do that all the time. That and groan and slam the journal shut ready to hurl it into the trash because it's so mortifying.

    Laura, totally true. Everyone has their insecurities and that was what was relatable. Even if I did want to throttle her. Thanks for coming by!

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