I turned nineteen yesterday. The event prompted me to create a mix cd in the post-midnight hours of the 21st. Autobiographical, about the past year. The cd sucked. But that's okay. Because its creation caused me to look through this diary, to remember how I've felt and what I've done over the past year.
And it's disappointing, because the overlying theme for the past year is that of misguidance. A search for meaning and self in areas where I could never find either one. Instances in going too far, not far enough, and never ending up anywhere I found comfortable.
Religion is a big area. I spent the majority of the year respecting religions to a ridiculous degree. Attempting to con myself into believing them. And failing. Repeatedly.
Music is another area where this played a part. Mostly there was too much focus on genres. Focusing on one for a few months, moving to another, and another. Hoping to find a home and never doing so. Never realising that it was always the bands that were important. Individuals, not the set of cliches they may or may not be leaning towards.
There are other examples, none of which I want to get into. If you've been reading, you probably know some of them. But I feel like I've gotten past all of it in an odd leap of clarity. I feel like me again, perhaps for always. And that makes me feel incredibly grateful.
Things will be different this year. Honestly, they already are different. I shocked my family repeatedly the past few days. I've started asking for things I want, speaking up, even being bossy.
I guess I've gotten to the point where I trust myself enough to speak. To do what I want. And this shocks me as well. I didn't even start doing it until about a week ago.
Things really are moving quickly now.
I'm growing up, I think.
I understand a hell of a lot more than I did when I was younger. And a large part of that is finally understanding how naive, how ignorant I really was. And how young I actually am.
Teenagers are not young. I was not young, when I was younger. But now I am. And I think this is a perfectly natural progression.
I hate to say that I've been living in an unreal world for most of my life, and that's why I felt so old, felt like I understood it so well, but I do believe it's true. I feel like I'm finally starting to live. I'm finally starting to see the fabled real world on the horizon. And, fuck. Everything makes so much more sense. And everything is so much wider, so much more beautiful, and so much newer.
I really know nothing of it. But I can almost taste it.
I have the rest of my life to figure things out. Me, the world, the meaning of my particular life.
And I love that. Absolutely.
revoless.
10:24 p.m.
November 23, 2003.
Listening to: Bright Eyes.