Teenage Dirtbag

I recently found my blog from freshman year of college circa 2004-2006 and I can’t stop thinking about it. I was so open and honest and strangely confident for someone who couldn’t consistently spell “weird” or “definitely” correctly. I was writing a lot of specific anecdotes to make my ex-boyfriend jealous and it’s painfully obvious. It’s very, very vulgar- that was like my schtick back then- and I say a lot of cringey things. Unbelievably cringey things just thrown into the vortex of the internet forever. Social media was SO weird back then.

I can’t bring myself to share that blog publicly again (sorry!), but privately I must say I really enjoyed reading it and I’m happy I have access to it. I was like a paleontologist digging through old artifacts of a life long, long, longggggg forgotten. Blowing dust off tiny Hollister mini-skirts and delicately picking through cutesy black out jokes. I sat there trying to remember myself at 19 on an average day- just waking up in a dorm and casually putting on a tube top to walk down to class. Turning on my DELL desktop with the huge monitor only to use AIM and immediately put up some cryptic away message. I can envision bits and pieces of this life so vividly- my sociology professor, my bunk bed, walking to house parties on snowy nights, the smell of a Blimpie’s sub in the morning- but there’s so much I had forgotten. College was such a huge part of my life but it was only 4 short years, that I rarely even think about anymore.

And of course, the older I get, the further away that life feels. It feels the same as high school to me, which I barely remember at all! (Do I have dementia? Did I hire someone to erase my memories a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?) I’m at an age where I’ve spent just as many years outside of my hometown as I spent growing up in it! It made me think about where I’ll be in another 18 years- what I will forget & what I will remember. Perhaps trying to reminisce on this particular period of my life after reading this shitty ass blog! This tiny corner of my life, when my kids were all babies and we lived on an island. I’ll try to remember the sensation of rocking Lola with jungle sounds & loud reggatone music lulling her to sleep, or the kids’ bathroom always reeking like piss and the never ending suspicious puddles on the floor, their tan little chubby hands, and their golden sandy curls. Swimming, laughing, tantrumming! It kills me if I think too long about the passage of time. Honestly disappointed that time travel has not been invented yet and it’s not likely that it will be in my lifetime. If it is, you’ll catch me on the first portal back to right now, or maybe back to UWEC campus on a fall day in 2004.

I wish I could hang out with 19 year old me for a day, she really was fun once you pulled back those layers of thinly veiled narcissism and lacy Wet Seal tank tops (TWO, always two tank tops- WHY?), and a budding drinking problem. She’d be equally fascinated with my life at 36. Bitch, you got 3 kids!!! You’re still best friends with Lisa Schumaker! Your husband gets jealous that Lisa is your best friend and not him! You ain’t got no job!!! You’re not scared of fish anymore and you swim in the ocean ALL the time! Everything worked out after all.

I wouldn’t go back and change anything except maybe tell her to quit using fucking tanning beds because there is still no cure for skin cancer like you thought there’d be by now. And take more Spanish classes, that would be useful right about now in Puerto Rico. I wouldn’t judge her partying ways; I’d actually politely recommend she try more drugs while she has the time for it because there will come a day when drug dealers just do not offer you drugs anymore while you’re walking through town with 3 children.

I can’t go back and give advice to my younger self about things like belly button rings and boys who smoke cigarettes, but I can think about another 18 years in the future to when I’m 54 years old. My daughter will be 19 and maybe, just maybe she will be on her way to becoming a BluGold too. Honey, take it from me: drop some acid if you get the chance because 20 years from now you’ll probably wish you did at least once. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. And go ahead and show off your belly button ring more, you’re so goddamn skinny!!!!! I can’t believe how well you speak Spanish and swim in oceans.

Fast forward and rewind between myself at 19 and 36 and I’m so different that it blows my mind. Places I’ve been, people I’ve met and loved and lost along the way, a whole trail of mistakes and missteps and missed disasters. And also just hundreds of average, forgettable days. Backwards and forwards, I still can’t pinpoint where I became the person who is okay with owning a minivan and listens to 90s alternative radio stations.