Some Basics

Before I jump into the first Notes from 2010/high school entry posts, I think I should give a basic overview of where I was coming from just before I got depressed.

In junior high, I had a small but tight group of friends. We were nerds, and we got teased like hell, but we had each other and that made it all kind of okay. The thing that initially brought us together was that we were all anime-obsessed in an era when anime wasn't remotely cool, and generally assumed to be kids' stuff or porn, depending who you asked. We loved Sailor Moon (naturally), Ranma 1/2, Project A-Ko, Rurouni Kenshin, and so on, and we watched whatever we could buy or rent. Anime was a lot scarcer back in the VHS days, at least where we lived.

This is the group I mentioned in my intro post: the one that had broken up almost completely by the summer between tenth and eleventh grades, and that I clung to desperately way longer than I should have, because I didn't know what to do without them. There were a few other people we hung out with a fair bit, but these are the ones I was close with, and who I feel like I need to explain ahead of time. There are other people you'll see me meet along the way, but I'd known my junior high friends for years, so without context, the journal entries about them could be hard to follow.


Junior high friends:

Hannah: One of my oldest friends in junior high (and, for the record, still one of my oldest and closest friends today). We'd known each other since elementary school, and stayed friends through high school. We had some issues at the time, and I'm sorry to say I often absolved myself of a lot of bitchiness towards her because I always cast her in the bitch-queen role. You'll often see me call her patronizing, say that she talks down to me, claim that she's a lot less mature than I am. And maybe not all of that was off base--maybe she did patronize me sometimes; and yes, it pisses me off to this day when someone is clearly treating me like that. But I was just as flawed as she was, and I had no right to be so fucking judgmental. I think a big part of it was that I was jealous of how much more easily she made friends than I did, since I had myself so convinced I was a nicer, better, more interesting person. Which I can say now is absolute bullshit.

Looking back, I know I didn't appreciate her friendship and loyalty half as much as I should have, and as I hope I do now. It's hard to read some of the things I wrote about her back then, and honestly, they're a big part of why this blog is, and will remain, anonymous: I do not remotely feel that way anymore, and I never, never want her to know that I did. Hannah, I hope to God you never read this, but I still want to say it here: I'm sorry. You are a great friend, and I am an unforgivable moron for not realizing that back that.


Isaac, aka Izzy: Izzy was my best friend, and my polar opposite. He was outgoing, artistic, loved the spotlight, never had trouble speaking his mind, and was himself whether people liked it or not. I was shy, quiet, and as much as I wanted to stand out, I was way more scared of making a fool of myself. I wanted to be liked and admired, but I was too afraid to risk being laughed at to even try.

Maybe it was a complementary personality thing, but somehow we clicked despite our differences. Izzy was my closest friend and confidante for a good two years, and I'll always look back on that with a lot of love for him. (Totally platonic love, that is--there was never any attraction between us, from either side.) But from the beginning, Izzy was a lot cooler than I ever had a hope of being. He was also more curious about sex and drugs (not my thing to this day, for a variety of personal reasons I may eventually touch on), and had higher aspirations of being seen as cool, if not necessarily popular. By tenth grade, he'd pretty well ditched me for a new group of friends who were more into that too. At the time it hurt like a motherfucker, though I get now how it was only natural for him to do pull away from me. We still keep in touch, though we sometimes go years without seeing each other.


Dani: One of Hannah's oldest friends. She went to a different junior high school than the rest of us, but we spent tons of time talking on the phone and online, and hanging out after school and on weekends. She was a ton of fun, a nice combination of reserved and outgoing, and could make us laugh at just about anything. She moved to a different city before high school started, but we emailed a lot and visited when we could, and we're still friends today. She and Hannah are still close too.


Alyssa: Hannah and I met her in seventh grade, and she integrated into the (slightly different) group of friends we had at the time easily. Our friendship with her was the opposite of our friendship with Dani, in that we almost never saw Alyssa outside of school, but spent almost all our time together during the school week. She was never as big on anime as the rest of us, but got kind of into it by proxy. Alyssa and I weren't especially close, but it was still confusing for me when she found a new group of friends in high school and stopped hanging out with me and Hannah. She was always nice to me, though, and reached out to me now and then over the years, long after I'd stopped expecting it. We've fallen out of touch these days, but I hope she's living a good life, wherever she is.


Iris: Hannah, Alyssa and I also became friends with her in seventh grade. Iris was from a certain background, and had two groups she hung out with: me and my friends, and another group of kids who were from the same background as her. Her closest friends from each group would all hang out together once in a while, but for the most part my friends only knew Iris's other friends to say hi to. Iris was one of the friends who stuck by me all through high school, and I owe her a deep debt of gratitude for that. We had one or two classes together each year, and, honest to God, hanging out with her for an hour or two every week helped keep me sane. She was an incredibly sweet, caring person, and while I was never brave enough to confide my deepest problems to her, the fact that she liked and accepted me helped me feel like maybe I was worth something after all. If someone like Iris felt I was good enough to be her friend, there must be at least a tiny spark of something good in me. Unfortunately, Iris and I grew apart when we went to different universities. But we're Facebook friends these days, and she seems very happy, which I'm very glad to know.


Hannah, Dani, Izzy and I were regulars at couple anime-based chat rooms. We'd stay up for hours talking to each other and our "c-friends" there. This was pre-cell phones and IMing was just starting to come into style when we were in grade 9 or 10 (and God do I feel old right now), so chatting was our answer to texting. It gave us some much-appreciated autonomy and privacy, since our parents couldn't hear what we were typing, and didn't spend that much time looking over our shoulders.

We all had online friends we considered as real as each other, and some of them will also come up in my entries. It's usually obvious when I'm talking about people I only knew online versus people I knew in real life, but there are a couple people who need an explanation up front, so it's clear who they are.


Online friends:

Izumi-chan/Camille: The closest online friend I have ever had. We emailed back and forth a ton when I was in grades 10 through 12, and told each other just about everything. I was as close to her as I ever was to Izzy. Izumi-chan was her chat name, and Camille was her real name, and I use them interchangeably in my diary entries. Camille had a lot more life experience than I did, but she was loving and patient with me, listened to everything I had to say, and gave me a long-distance shoulder to cry on, plus real advice and support. I honestly don't know if I would still be here if I hadn't had her.

She was going through some pretty bad shit herself at the same time I was dealing with my depression, and I can only hope I helped her as much as she helped me. We've lost touch over the years, but I hold out hope that I'll someday track her down on Facebook, or MySpace, or somewhere like that. I would love to get to know her again.


Skylark: My first big online crush, and my first big crush on a girl. I think I talked to her three whole times in the entire time I knew her--possibly for a total of an hour, possibly less. *L* I started getting minor crushes on girls online when I was 13 or 14, and calling myself "open." When I was 15, I came out to myself (and later, others) as bisexual, and I've identified as bi (and more recently, pansexual) ever since. In retrospect, I think the barely-warranted online crushes were a safe way to start exploring that side of myself without any risk of serious consequences. Wherever my (entirely unrequited) feelings sprang from, Skylark will come up quite a bit in my earliest entries.



I think that covers the essentials of who and what my earliest journal entries are going on about. In the next couple posts, I'll move on to real thing.

Addendum

As I've started typing up my old diaries, I've quickly discovered that I'll need to provide context for quite a few of them, at least at the beginning. I was writing them for myself, so I didn't need to explain certain things, like who were the most important people in my life versus those on the periphery. To that end, most (possibly all) high school posts will be preceded by a "Notes from 2010" post, where I'll give that context.

And I will also probably laugh at myself a lot in those notes. Because it's really, really hard not to when I'm talking about old crushes--mostly on people who had no idea I existed--and reading old rants about not getting along with my mother--all that shit teenagers go through, and that I am so, so thankful I'm long past. I'm alternately amused by, exasperated with and genuinely sorry for the girl I used to be, and I can't resist poking fun at my old self places where I'm taking myself waaay more seriously than I deserved to. I mean-who could? When you're talking about a part of your life when you were severely depressed-to the point that I probably should have sought treatment a lot more aggressively than I did-you gotta find the funny. Otherwise-God, I don't think I'd want to read this, much less expect anyone else to.

So feel free to snicker at me (and I do mean both then-me and now-me) whenever I deserve it. It'll make the serious parts a lot more readable, and I'll be able to present a much fuller picture of who I was if I include the bits that makes me want to smack old myself upside the head.

An Explanation

The title of this blog, You Might As Well Live, comes from the poem "Resume" by Dorothy Parker, which I like quite a lot. Since it's short, I'll quote it in full here:


Resume
Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.


But since that URL was taken, I chose some lyrics from the song "The Quitter" by Rasputina for that instead. The first couple verses:


I have worked out every small detail
In this plan I've made.
This thing which cannot fail.
I dare myself to do this one thing.
You can have my car
Go on, take everything.

All that's good is gone, it's gone.
I have tried too long.


You can see where this is going.

A decade ago, I was in my final year of high school. I was also in the middle of the longest, most crushing period of depression I have ever had to live through. It started in eleventh grade, when I was sixteen, and didn't let up in any significant way until the summer after I graduated. Before that happened, I thought very seriously about suicide, and more than once I came close to making an attempt--though thankfully, in the end I never did.

By the beginning of eleventh grade, the group of friends I'd had in junior high had broken apart. This was difficult for me to deal with. I was painfully shy and terrible at fitting in--pretty much a deal-breaker in high school. I was also going through some family issues at the time, which didn't help matters. What started out as feeling a little lonely all too quickly turned to debilitating loneliness, and the conviction that if I couldn't find people to be friends with, it had to be because there was something so fundamentally wrong with me no one could stand to be around me.

From there, I slid into a state of near-constant despair, self-loathing and, of course, deep loneliness that seemed like it would never end. Sometime near the beginning of grade twelve, I told myself that I would wait three more months to see if things got any better, and if they didn't, I had permission to kill myself.

Writing is the one thing I've always felt like I'm reasonably good at, and since I had no one to talk to about what I was going through, I kept extensive journals through all of this. It was the only reasonably healthy way I knew to release some of the pain and, however temporarily, enable myself to stop dwelling on it.

And that's what this blog will primarily consist of: entries from my journals at that time, chronicling, in as close to chronological order as I can manage, my descent into depression and suicidal thoughts, and my gradual rise back to something more like balance. I did have an unrequited crush at the time, so I may gloss over entries about that when they feel unrelated to my main intent for this; but the entries I do post will appear pretty much verbatim, and any present-day commentary I make on them will be clearly marked. The only things I plan to change are--for my privacy and that of anyone else I mention--the names of people and places. Myself, I'll be going by Valerie, or Vale. It's an old, anonymous username I've brought out of retirement for this blog.

I've read through enough of my old journal entries to know there are some disturbing moments, and I have enough triggers of my own to respect others people's. So if you are someone who can be triggered by reading about self-hatred, self-injury, the contemplation of suicide, or body image issues, please be warned that those will all be touched on in the course of this blog. It won't usually be terribly graphic, but I know that's not always necessary to be triggered, and I don't want to blindside anybody.

And as for the why of this... It helped a lot, when I was so depressed, to have the Internet available to me. It gave me the chance to look for other people who felt like I did, even if I was too shy and scared to make myself known to them. It still helped to know that I wasn't alone, wasn't the only one going through this. When I hit a particularly difficult moment in my life, it still helps to be able to see that. It makes me feel like less of a freak, and like those people might even give a crap about how I feel and not judge me for it, because they know what it's like to feel that way.

So while I don't deny that there is a narcissistic element to anyone openly posting their old journal entries online--I hope that's trumped by a sincere desire to help in whatever little way I can. If a single person reads this and feels a little less alone, or like maybe they can keep going for another week, or day, or hour... if this helps anyone, then I'm so glad. I'm not a counselor, or a psychologist or a trained professional of any kind--I'm just someone who's been there, and knows how much it sucks, and wants to lessen that pain for someone else, even if just for a moment. Because I do care. And I won't judge. I just want to help you know--for whatever it's worth--that you're not the only one.

My plan at the moment is to update this with an entry a minimum of once a week, probably on Thursday or Friday. If I decide to change that schedule at any point, I'll mention it.