From the Journal

A journal series from my teen years. 

These scans are from the diaries I kept from the ages of 14-15, a time in my life when watercolors, butterfly stickers, Kurt Cobain quotes, and melodramatic inner monologues were my weapons against the alienation of high school and the dystopia that is youth. 

The pages of these journals were my chambers of reflection, a space where cutouts from movie posters, rainbow calendars, and religious pamphlets created a canvas of escape. It was a space where my life could exist within the pale blue lines of a composition notebook. First loves, heartache, agony, isolation, rambles of pseudo-intellectual thought and longing spiraled, but it was okay because in those pages the ugliness of my life became pastel colored, glittery, beautiful - they glistened in the words of my idols and bloomed in the images I chose to mirror my life. 

I'm 19 now, so it’s a bit funny looking back at my entries because they’re full of cliches and uber dramatic, but I feel like that’s the point of this month's theme; recognizing that melodrama is still a valid series of emotions. It might feel silly now, but the words I wrote felt hyper sincere at the time. Just because my perspective has changed doesn't wipe out the person I was when I wrote those words. That 14 year old girl will survive forever in those pages - she's forever young.