When one starts a blog, what does one say on one's first post? I've had blogs before. I had blogs before they were blogs. I had "online journals." I was among the cutters, English majors and emo kiddies (sometimes all three combined) who had a Livejournal. Before that, I was a poet on the FreeOpenDiary. I would write religiously in those things, mostly during high school. For someone like me, who gains self-confidence from attention, an online journal is the only way to share my personal stories and the deep, dark secrets. I like having strangers stumble into my world on the Internets one day, tell me to "shut the fuck up with your bitching, you fag" and then continue on their merry little way. I understand that the Internet serves both of us, the writer and the online-bully because it allows us to get away with shit we'd never try to pull in real life.
But this is real life, isn't it? I have to admit, my livejournal and freeopendiary accounts have been deleted, all hundreds of entries erased. I just hate facing real life, especially in retrospect if that's even possible. The few times that I decided to go the old-fashioned way and actually use a pen to write my feelings - those entries also went to a trash can, except they didn't make the cool crumple and swishing noise that my computer makes when I throw something away. The problem is, for a very long time, I didn't like myself very much. I thought I did, and I was good at faking it, but when I faced the things I had created, I read them and felt miles away from whoever wrote it. And it bugged me, even.
Keeping in mind that much of this was in high school, even middle school, I remember being disgusted with the topics that plagued my journals: boys, wanting to fall in love, boys, more wanting to fall in love, rants about Britney Spears, coming to terms with my sexuality, and also boys. And every post was a big!!! fucking!!! DEAL, you guys!!!!!!
I noticed this again, recently, at work. I work with a girl who is still in high school. I really enjoy our relationship. It's not patronizing, it's just fun. It's fun to see someone, still fully engaged in the high school life. Moods are so unstable, it's like everybody's fucking bi-polar. But it's a fun mental illness. It reminds me of how I used to be... much more hyperactive, a jungle gym of emotions, crushes, assertions and excitement. I wasn't one of the teenagers who felt nothing and only wanted to die because no one understood me. No way, everyone understood me!!! And if they didn't, damnit!! I would make them!! We'd talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk!!!! I was one of the teenagers that was so high-strung that if an assignment wasn't due the day I remembered it to be due, my life was over, I was failing high school, subsequently failing college, failing at life and oh my God, someone give me a breathing tube.
I wish I still had those blogs. After the year of 2008, a year of mental growth and progress, I would love to still have them to relish in the excitement, the superficiality of life as a 16 year-old. It's not superficial as in everything is fake, but a teenager's world is based on the surface of things, almost as if they are supposed to be incapable of truly digging deeper. And with the way my memory has been going lately, it would help me to remember that life as 16 year-old gay boy named Wesley was about what movie was being released next, when he was going back to Vegas to visit, what boy he was ready to fall in love with, and what play he could be in. And if Ginger would ever re-join the Spice Girls and make the world right again.
I'm hesitant to use the word "change," because Barack Obama gave us a good J.Lo dosage of overexposure with that word and I really hate that Sheryl Crowe song (or any Sheryl Crowe song, come to think of it...) that says "a change! (a change) would do you good!" I'm also hesitant to use the word "change" with myself, because I'm not sure I can say how much of me has changed. Chances are very likely that this blog will include a rant about Britney Spears at some point. And it's author, I've learned, is predisposed to only think in terms of what movie is being released next. Time is not hours and days and minutes, time is every Wednesday or Friday and what good movie is going to be on the screen. Chances are also likely that at some point, I will delete this blog like I've deleted many of my online-memories. So enjoy it while it exists.
I'd like to say that I haven't changed as much as I've adapted, or learned. The fundamentals of Wes are still very much the same, I just have new ways of handling life and massive piles of shit that are thrown my way. And I feel really good about that.
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