An Archive of Youth: 11 to 22 on Livejournal
I'm going to leave this journal up.
I'm not going to edit a single thing, not going to change photos or names. I'm going to leave this right where it is, because it's an online record of growing up.
I started this journal when I was eleven.
That's before so much. So, so much.
I've moved across the ocean, and have lived overseas for five years. In an apartment/flat, not a dorm. Both of my parents are dying, my father is currently terminally ill. I'm now twenty-two years old, and I'm figuring things out, still. I could say more, but I know enough to know that you have to always hide certain things, until you've designed a way to tell them in a way that is tailor-cut and ready for window display. Otherwise, you're too raw. And everyone is too raw, all the time, and that's why it hurts to look at and it hurts to feel and it hurts to think.
When I was younger, and writing in this journal, it was the worst time of my life so far. I can say that without a doubt, without even needing to read back too much. I hate to even think back to those years for a second, even as some kind of curiosity-driven entertainment. It's a weird urge to spot-check my memory, to make sure that I didn't just make up shit.
But then I remember I'm covered head to toe in scars that I gave myself, when I was eleven, and in the following years, and I remember without effort just how terrible it was. And how terrible it can still be, and will always be, no matter what I do or where I go.
I've accepted that I'm just going to be shit on by life. With no end, with no goal, and no sense of satisfaction or happiness, no matter what. And I'm calm about it. I still cut myself, I still cry, I still hate myself, I still talk too much.
I probably still sound like an idiot. Because, you know, I probably still am.
But this is a peek into one human being's development. You can follow my weird, disjointed, sad, young thoughts. Pre-diagnosis, pre-divorce, pre-graduation, pre-running away from home. Pre-moving across the world. Pre-so much.
I ran away, and didn't look back, because there was too much. There is always too much, and there's no way to deal with it, so I write. And I draw, and I listen to a lot of shitty songs on repeat.
Some things are just a human, universal constant.
We're young, and then we're not, and then whatever. It happens every time.
We're all so unremarkable. And youth is that terrible time when you don't realise that. Growing up is so terrible, because you learn that once you get all the little things about you figured out, and you have the ability to act on those things and get a little more freedom (and a little less in other ways), and after this whole time of being the focus of all this hate and consternation from everyone around you, you're just dumped into this void-like ether, and told to get the fuck out.
And you get the fuck out of there, and it's whatever, but in a new way.
For me, the new way was a better way. It can get unbearably bad. But nothing will be as terrible as being young was.
Nothing will beat how sad and miserable and so intolerably fucking lonely I was.
I'm still all of those things, but on my terms. And that makes a huge difference, mentally ill or not. Youth was a whole other level of deranged.
I hate myself, now. I used to hate everyone and everything around me, and of course I hated myself as well, but now I hate myself so much that I alone am what nearly drives me to suicide every night.
I have a chest tattoo appointment tomorrow. (I have three huge tattoos now.) I have nine piercings in my face alone. I love them all. I love it.
I overate today, for the first time in many months. I want to die. I have to get my chest tattoo finished tomorrow. I'll hate myself so much, I'll be so embarassed. They have to see my stomach when I take my shirt off, you know.
This journal might be the only place where I can think unedited like this. Where nobody knows me, really. It's a beach, here, and every time I walk the shore, the tide comes and delicately wears my footsteps back down, so that every word is a split second and nothing more. Like a real timeline.
So I don't feel afraid to speak here. This is still the only place.
I'm a chronic insomniac. I'm suicidal. I'm unemployed. I'm a fuck-up.
I love movies and media, comics, zines especially. I want to be a writer, an artist, an actor. I want to act most of all.
I live in poverty. I live in fear.
I hate myself, but not as much as I hate my fucking fiancee.
I love this town. London is what keeps me alive. These people hate me, and I am afraid of them, but I love this town. I do. I love this fucking city with everything I am, whatever the fuck that is.
No matter the age, or the context, or the content, this is a record of me.
How horrible I felt, how terrible life was for me as a kid, Jesus, it's unbearable to think about. As an adult, I can say that nobody ever helped me back then. Nobody gave a damn. I did everything right, and everyone in a position to do anything about anything really did do everything wrong, and that is such a relief, in a way.
It's not my fault that I want to kill myself. Every single adult, teacher, doctor, lawyer, parent, rapist, abuser, whatever (I could really go on), they're the ones that all fucked me up in the most vicious, mean, cruel ways they possibly could have.
Every single adult failed me. So of course I fail at being an adult.
It's not an excuse, it's just a fact. I hate excuses almost as much as I hate assumptions.
London keeps me living. And if I ever get tossed away, when this place finally rejects me like I'm an infusion of the wrong blood type, well, I'd rather die here than go backwards.
I never had an option, and I don't have any now, and it's whatever.
All roads in life lead to whatever. It's almost a zen philosophy. I love my scars.
And all this bullshit waxing poetic and art and trauma and writing and my sheer need for revenge, my hate for people, my hate for myself, my love for London, my need to create, my compulsion to continue to rot indefinitely out of fear as a result of endless, endless, endless trauma. Knowing that nobody will ever care.
All life really is, honest to god, is fear. And when you get suicidal, you stop caring, and then (ironically) you start living, almost. Because you're so scared, and you just can't take it anymore, and you want to die so bad that you don't even care if someone else does it.
It's bizarre. I went outside at night for the first time this week. I didn't get stabbed. I sorta wanted to get stabbed, but only if it's fatal. Fuck all that other shit. So I guess I don't want to get stabbed. I need to hydrate more.
That's how I think! It never got better. My misery never grew up.
My misery never grew up, damn. That's really true. I guess it never does.
And everything is a guess, now.
I'm listening to the Harmontown Podcast, where Dan is reading his youth diary, and I figured I'd see if mine was still here, and goddamn, here we are.
This shitty, sad, laughable little pothole in the internet is the blip on nobody's radar that happens to be some of me.
Just me, young me, preserved in bad articulation and stupid memes and lonely desperation and precious, plain youth.
I was young. I was so fucked up. I'm still fucked up.
And this place is still the only place, the only one, where I feel I'm writing in a journal. No other account or website, it's just this one, this is the one.
I was eleven, when I did this the first time.
I'm just as frustrated, but about other things. I'm full of guilt, sorrow, loneliness, fear, anger, pain, and I learned how to be mean. I had to. I was too good, and that got me fucked over. I was a good kid, and the good kids all end up dead. I know, because I was good, and I tried. Really, really tried. To kill myself, I mean. Many times.
If I succeeded, I wouldn't be up all night cutting my wrists nowadays. If I failed, I never would have had the satisfactions, the horrors. I never would have grown up, and I still don't know if I'm grown up, or if I'm right at all, about anything, if I'm ever going to be me.
I don't know anything. I'm less feelings, nowadays, and more bland misery. I preferred the energy of youth, but not the restrictions. Being eleven was so much worse than being twenty-two, so far, and that's considering some terrible things.
I'm crying, thinking about how much has changed. And how much hasn't. And what, and why, and who. And where.
And when, along the line, did I grow up?
Or did I grow up at all?
Did it get worse or better? Do I have taste? Can I judge anything? Will I ever be able to?
I feel like hell today.
I always feel like hell. Always have. Now I feel like hell in some new ways.
I guess that's what growing up is: Having so much new misery, that the old misery looks small in comparison. But I'll never make the mistake of dismissing that old misery, like so many other people seem to.
I remember me. I still don't know who the fuck I am, or what I will be, but I can tell who I was. And I was a good kid that was screaming in pain, and everyone heard me, and nobody gave a damn.
I don't think I got mean, though. I got bitter. And then I got tired.
I don't know if twenty-two year olds should ever be this sad and tired.
I don't know anything.
But maybe, one day, I'll figure something out, and I'll check in, as I do every few years, and I'll remind myself in the future.
I'll say some sleep-deprived, sad thing, and never forget, and check in, and so on.
I'm waiting on some laundry. I hate my wife. I'm going to get a dog, soon. Summer is almost over, maybe, and that's soul-crushing. I hate university, and only waste the time and money because I really do have to, or I'd start genuinely trying to kill myself again.
Happiness is never in the cards. But maybe when I'm grown up, I'll know how to rig the deck.
I'm not going to edit a single thing, not going to change photos or names. I'm going to leave this right where it is, because it's an online record of growing up.
I started this journal when I was eleven.
That's before so much. So, so much.
I've moved across the ocean, and have lived overseas for five years. In an apartment/flat, not a dorm. Both of my parents are dying, my father is currently terminally ill. I'm now twenty-two years old, and I'm figuring things out, still. I could say more, but I know enough to know that you have to always hide certain things, until you've designed a way to tell them in a way that is tailor-cut and ready for window display. Otherwise, you're too raw. And everyone is too raw, all the time, and that's why it hurts to look at and it hurts to feel and it hurts to think.
When I was younger, and writing in this journal, it was the worst time of my life so far. I can say that without a doubt, without even needing to read back too much. I hate to even think back to those years for a second, even as some kind of curiosity-driven entertainment. It's a weird urge to spot-check my memory, to make sure that I didn't just make up shit.
But then I remember I'm covered head to toe in scars that I gave myself, when I was eleven, and in the following years, and I remember without effort just how terrible it was. And how terrible it can still be, and will always be, no matter what I do or where I go.
I've accepted that I'm just going to be shit on by life. With no end, with no goal, and no sense of satisfaction or happiness, no matter what. And I'm calm about it. I still cut myself, I still cry, I still hate myself, I still talk too much.
I probably still sound like an idiot. Because, you know, I probably still am.
But this is a peek into one human being's development. You can follow my weird, disjointed, sad, young thoughts. Pre-diagnosis, pre-divorce, pre-graduation, pre-running away from home. Pre-moving across the world. Pre-so much.
I ran away, and didn't look back, because there was too much. There is always too much, and there's no way to deal with it, so I write. And I draw, and I listen to a lot of shitty songs on repeat.
Some things are just a human, universal constant.
We're young, and then we're not, and then whatever. It happens every time.
We're all so unremarkable. And youth is that terrible time when you don't realise that. Growing up is so terrible, because you learn that once you get all the little things about you figured out, and you have the ability to act on those things and get a little more freedom (and a little less in other ways), and after this whole time of being the focus of all this hate and consternation from everyone around you, you're just dumped into this void-like ether, and told to get the fuck out.
And you get the fuck out of there, and it's whatever, but in a new way.
For me, the new way was a better way. It can get unbearably bad. But nothing will be as terrible as being young was.
Nothing will beat how sad and miserable and so intolerably fucking lonely I was.
I'm still all of those things, but on my terms. And that makes a huge difference, mentally ill or not. Youth was a whole other level of deranged.
I hate myself, now. I used to hate everyone and everything around me, and of course I hated myself as well, but now I hate myself so much that I alone am what nearly drives me to suicide every night.
I have a chest tattoo appointment tomorrow. (I have three huge tattoos now.) I have nine piercings in my face alone. I love them all. I love it.
I overate today, for the first time in many months. I want to die. I have to get my chest tattoo finished tomorrow. I'll hate myself so much, I'll be so embarassed. They have to see my stomach when I take my shirt off, you know.
This journal might be the only place where I can think unedited like this. Where nobody knows me, really. It's a beach, here, and every time I walk the shore, the tide comes and delicately wears my footsteps back down, so that every word is a split second and nothing more. Like a real timeline.
So I don't feel afraid to speak here. This is still the only place.
I'm a chronic insomniac. I'm suicidal. I'm unemployed. I'm a fuck-up.
I love movies and media, comics, zines especially. I want to be a writer, an artist, an actor. I want to act most of all.
I live in poverty. I live in fear.
I hate myself, but not as much as I hate my fucking fiancee.
I love this town. London is what keeps me alive. These people hate me, and I am afraid of them, but I love this town. I do. I love this fucking city with everything I am, whatever the fuck that is.
No matter the age, or the context, or the content, this is a record of me.
How horrible I felt, how terrible life was for me as a kid, Jesus, it's unbearable to think about. As an adult, I can say that nobody ever helped me back then. Nobody gave a damn. I did everything right, and everyone in a position to do anything about anything really did do everything wrong, and that is such a relief, in a way.
It's not my fault that I want to kill myself. Every single adult, teacher, doctor, lawyer, parent, rapist, abuser, whatever (I could really go on), they're the ones that all fucked me up in the most vicious, mean, cruel ways they possibly could have.
Every single adult failed me. So of course I fail at being an adult.
It's not an excuse, it's just a fact. I hate excuses almost as much as I hate assumptions.
London keeps me living. And if I ever get tossed away, when this place finally rejects me like I'm an infusion of the wrong blood type, well, I'd rather die here than go backwards.
I never had an option, and I don't have any now, and it's whatever.
All roads in life lead to whatever. It's almost a zen philosophy. I love my scars.
And all this bullshit waxing poetic and art and trauma and writing and my sheer need for revenge, my hate for people, my hate for myself, my love for London, my need to create, my compulsion to continue to rot indefinitely out of fear as a result of endless, endless, endless trauma. Knowing that nobody will ever care.
All life really is, honest to god, is fear. And when you get suicidal, you stop caring, and then (ironically) you start living, almost. Because you're so scared, and you just can't take it anymore, and you want to die so bad that you don't even care if someone else does it.
It's bizarre. I went outside at night for the first time this week. I didn't get stabbed. I sorta wanted to get stabbed, but only if it's fatal. Fuck all that other shit. So I guess I don't want to get stabbed. I need to hydrate more.
That's how I think! It never got better. My misery never grew up.
My misery never grew up, damn. That's really true. I guess it never does.
And everything is a guess, now.
I'm listening to the Harmontown Podcast, where Dan is reading his youth diary, and I figured I'd see if mine was still here, and goddamn, here we are.
This shitty, sad, laughable little pothole in the internet is the blip on nobody's radar that happens to be some of me.
Just me, young me, preserved in bad articulation and stupid memes and lonely desperation and precious, plain youth.
I was young. I was so fucked up. I'm still fucked up.
And this place is still the only place, the only one, where I feel I'm writing in a journal. No other account or website, it's just this one, this is the one.
I was eleven, when I did this the first time.
I'm just as frustrated, but about other things. I'm full of guilt, sorrow, loneliness, fear, anger, pain, and I learned how to be mean. I had to. I was too good, and that got me fucked over. I was a good kid, and the good kids all end up dead. I know, because I was good, and I tried. Really, really tried. To kill myself, I mean. Many times.
If I succeeded, I wouldn't be up all night cutting my wrists nowadays. If I failed, I never would have had the satisfactions, the horrors. I never would have grown up, and I still don't know if I'm grown up, or if I'm right at all, about anything, if I'm ever going to be me.
I don't know anything. I'm less feelings, nowadays, and more bland misery. I preferred the energy of youth, but not the restrictions. Being eleven was so much worse than being twenty-two, so far, and that's considering some terrible things.
I'm crying, thinking about how much has changed. And how much hasn't. And what, and why, and who. And where.
And when, along the line, did I grow up?
Or did I grow up at all?
Did it get worse or better? Do I have taste? Can I judge anything? Will I ever be able to?
I feel like hell today.
I always feel like hell. Always have. Now I feel like hell in some new ways.
I guess that's what growing up is: Having so much new misery, that the old misery looks small in comparison. But I'll never make the mistake of dismissing that old misery, like so many other people seem to.
I remember me. I still don't know who the fuck I am, or what I will be, but I can tell who I was. And I was a good kid that was screaming in pain, and everyone heard me, and nobody gave a damn.
I don't think I got mean, though. I got bitter. And then I got tired.
I don't know if twenty-two year olds should ever be this sad and tired.
I don't know anything.
But maybe, one day, I'll figure something out, and I'll check in, as I do every few years, and I'll remind myself in the future.
I'll say some sleep-deprived, sad thing, and never forget, and check in, and so on.
I'm waiting on some laundry. I hate my wife. I'm going to get a dog, soon. Summer is almost over, maybe, and that's soul-crushing. I hate university, and only waste the time and money because I really do have to, or I'd start genuinely trying to kill myself again.
Happiness is never in the cards. But maybe when I'm grown up, I'll know how to rig the deck.