Hello, music lover.
It strikes me as odd that my brain can tell me one thing, my heart another. I do know, the only way to survive this kind of expirience is to talk about your pain, to talk about what you miss, what you crave. To keep the feelings trapped inside is a torturous expirience, one that empties your soul. I almost lost myself in this expirience. Losing friends is one thing; losing yourself is another. For a time, I lost my voice and found myself slipping away. Buyt new friends and my inner strength got me through. The ability to tell myself and others what I was feeling is what kept me from disaster.
I was most compelled to write when I was living in darker times, or in more difficult moments, but we are not dyed in just one color. Rather, we are made from a complex pattern, intertwining weekness and strength, saddness and joy, pleasure and pain.
Like the startling images captured by tornado chasers, such is the writings of today's teenage girls. We do not need and expret intermediary filtering our expirience through interpretation. We can tell the world who we are directly, and with an intimacy and accuracy inaccessable to those outside our generation. In this space, I open a door, inviting everyone intent on understanding me, and eager to hear my own voice, to enter my reality. I show how my world looks and feels from the inside.
...
Peaople are always telling me I look like him. They can tell that we are related; that he is my father. But they could just be saying that. It's true. I've inhereted many of his features -- the dark, curly hair, the nose, the shape of my eyes, the olive skin. Our hands are even the same.
But the resemblances don't seem to end there. My face is very expressive. I am constantly making facial expressions, depending on my mood. For as long as I can remember, my mother has told me I am the image of my father when I make these faces.
I have mixed feelings about these comparisons.
Perhaos he doubts my fondness of him because, like my mother, like everyone I care about, he grates on my nerves sometimes. Perhaps it's because I, often unfairly, let my eyes roll more easily when he's around. Perhaps he thinks I dont realize I still need him. I know I do, usually more than I let on. I am balancing in the precarious position between adulthood and childhood. In the struggle to spread my wings, I think I sometimes flap them too wildly. I'mm still learning how they work.
...
I've looked up to my mom, unbeknownst to her, for years. My mom is my first and morst important female role model. That fast compounds the complexity of out relationship immensely. Most of her quirks -- the ones I roll my eyes at -- are the vary things I don't like in myself, or fear I will develop. Sometimes she knows me too well. Sometimes she doesn't understand me at all. She always loves me unconditionally.
...
Adolescence is not what I thought it would be. Happy endings aren't inserted conveniently befroe the last commercial break. The peer pressure isn't unrelenting. The wild parties are dangerously tempting. The first loves aren't thrillingly perfect. But, more unsettling than the unforseen teadium, my face isn't blemish-proof, and my stomah isn't immune to bloating. I was fed a cookie-cutter standard for beauty, and I do not invariably meet the media's image of perfect. As a media baby, I am a disappointment.
I do not have a cute nose, perfect skin, long legs, a flat stomach, or long eyelashes. My awareness of thses facts makes my body a backdrop for my everyday life. My stomach, back, skin, knees, hair are always in my peripheral vision. Never my sole focus, but always just tickling at my consciousness. I sometimes catch myself comparing my body to those of actresses, models, women walking down the street. Then I remind myself; happy, healthy, normal girls don't notice, don't envy, other women's small frames or sunken cheeks. They dont find pride in the comment, "Wow, your collar bones really stick out!" They don't feel guilty for not being as thin or as muscular as the star in the magazine clipping.
Oh, they don't, do they?
Elizabeth Fales wrote, "Someone making millions of dollars has decided to play on every girl's feeling of inadequacy. Insecurity is 'in', confidence is 'out'. In American culture, there's always room for improvement. The blond-haired, blue-eyes, size four, as-close-to-Heather-Locklear-as-possible look is the social norm, and the people to fail to qualify don't even get a consolation prize in the game of adolescence."
