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A Journey To The Centre Of My Embarrassing Past: Now With Pictures!
This morning, while rummaging through a bunch of old CDs in search of a song whose title I'd forgotten, I found a disc full of pictures. Specifically, pictures of a trip to Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec City that my class took in ninth grade.
Everyone is awful in junior high. (This is a scientific fact and anyone who disagrees will be taken behind the chemical shed and shot.) Junior high is a hideous, horrible, embarrassing time, full of acne, self-doubt, and unexpected erections*, and the only proper way to get through it is to hibernate until high school. Unfortunately, most people do not have this option; I didn't, which means I get to look back fondly on those days of innocence and think, "God, I was such a TIT."
I was awful in junior high. Like, really truly awful. I was sullen, mean, constantly miserable, overdramatic, and- worst of all- had a completely disproportionate image of my own suffering. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't occasionally have reasons to be miserable; this was junior high, and I was (at least for parts of it) a chubby, brace-faced, zitty queer who cut hir own hair and could read without moving hir lips. That kind of stuff is hard when you're fourteen, it really is, and I got shit for it. Especially the queer part. However, I took "some people are mean to me based on my appearance, social awkwardness, and sexuality" and turned it into "everyone is mean to me because everyone hates me and I am going to hate them right back and write poems about them all dying in car crashes while listening to Linkin Park** and weeping." To the rest of the world I was just some kid with a ratty ponytail who never smiled, but in my own mind I was Tragically Misunderstood, Constantly Ill-Used, and Bound to Eventually Get My Own Back. (Exactly how I was going to get my own back was never something I was really clear on. I think it involved getting obscenely rich and famous, then dying in a blaze of glory.) There are entries in this LJ from that period of my life, and sometimes I read them and I die a little inside because I was fucking unbearable and pretentious and how did I not throw myself down a staircase, that's what I want to know.
Knowing this, it now seems pretty obvious that a week-long trip with my school chums would not go well. (SPOILER: it didn't go well!) For reasons that are slightly complicated,*** I was ostracized from my usual group of friends, and spent the majority of that week wandering middle Canada by myself, glaring at everything and composing more terrible poems. (These ones were about being a miserable teenage queer instead of car crashes. Growing as a person, y/y?) It was a terrible time which, in retrospect, would have been less terrible if I'd stopped being a ~*~tOrTuReD sOuL~*~ for five minutes together and tried having actual fun. The pictures I found on this disc reflect this very well in that I am mostly not in them. The ones I am in show me doing two things: lurking and sulking.
Guys. I was so fucking good at lurking and sulking.
Lurking and sulking in Montreal!
Lurking and sulking on a bus!
Lurking and sulking in a restaurant! (At the teacher's table, no less. Aww yeah, coolest kid EVER.)
Lurking and sulking on a bridge! Beauty of nature my ass, I am trying to MOPE here.
I am in a lift full of people. And yet I lurk. And sulk.
This picture is kind of a mystery. It is one of a series, and in all the others ones I am there where that red circle is. And yet, in this one? NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. Did I duck? Did I get up to go to the bathroom? OR DID I JUST LURK/SULK MYSELF OUT OF EXISTENCE???
Lurking and sulking at a boat dance! You can tell this is a special sort of lurking and sulking because I braided my hair.
Here it looks like I am actually talking to someone! I bet I was super lurky and sulky while I did it, though.
Even when direct eye contact seems imminent, destroying valuable lurking opportunities, the sulk remains.
>:| stop taking my picture I am busy being morose >:|||
Dinnertime sulking is the worst kind of sulking.
Teacher, fellow students: *happy!*
Ish: *sulk*
Oblivious guy: *oblivious*
I am but a speck in this picture. Nevertheless, the sulk shines on like the crazy diamond it is.
And my all time favourite:
Everyone else: Hurray, we are enjoying our trip!
Ish: *Morrissey*
Oh, Past Self. A winner was you.
* That last one may not be universal.
** Yes, indeedy, I used to like Linkin Park! My favourite song was "Papercut." My song search this morning reminded me that I also liked Limp Bizkit. And Weezer. And Enya. Oh, boy, did I love me some Enya.
*** Short version: I loved this girl, she didn't love me back, BIG GAY DRAMZ.
Everyone is awful in junior high. (This is a scientific fact and anyone who disagrees will be taken behind the chemical shed and shot.) Junior high is a hideous, horrible, embarrassing time, full of acne, self-doubt, and unexpected erections*, and the only proper way to get through it is to hibernate until high school. Unfortunately, most people do not have this option; I didn't, which means I get to look back fondly on those days of innocence and think, "God, I was such a TIT."
I was awful in junior high. Like, really truly awful. I was sullen, mean, constantly miserable, overdramatic, and- worst of all- had a completely disproportionate image of my own suffering. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't occasionally have reasons to be miserable; this was junior high, and I was (at least for parts of it) a chubby, brace-faced, zitty queer who cut hir own hair and could read without moving hir lips. That kind of stuff is hard when you're fourteen, it really is, and I got shit for it. Especially the queer part. However, I took "some people are mean to me based on my appearance, social awkwardness, and sexuality" and turned it into "everyone is mean to me because everyone hates me and I am going to hate them right back and write poems about them all dying in car crashes while listening to Linkin Park** and weeping." To the rest of the world I was just some kid with a ratty ponytail who never smiled, but in my own mind I was Tragically Misunderstood, Constantly Ill-Used, and Bound to Eventually Get My Own Back. (Exactly how I was going to get my own back was never something I was really clear on. I think it involved getting obscenely rich and famous, then dying in a blaze of glory.) There are entries in this LJ from that period of my life, and sometimes I read them and I die a little inside because I was fucking unbearable and pretentious and how did I not throw myself down a staircase, that's what I want to know.
Knowing this, it now seems pretty obvious that a week-long trip with my school chums would not go well. (SPOILER: it didn't go well!) For reasons that are slightly complicated,*** I was ostracized from my usual group of friends, and spent the majority of that week wandering middle Canada by myself, glaring at everything and composing more terrible poems. (These ones were about being a miserable teenage queer instead of car crashes. Growing as a person, y/y?) It was a terrible time which, in retrospect, would have been less terrible if I'd stopped being a ~*~tOrTuReD sOuL~*~ for five minutes together and tried having actual fun. The pictures I found on this disc reflect this very well in that I am mostly not in them. The ones I am in show me doing two things: lurking and sulking.
Guys. I was so fucking good at lurking and sulking.
Lurking and sulking in Montreal!
Lurking and sulking on a bus!
Lurking and sulking in a restaurant! (At the teacher's table, no less. Aww yeah, coolest kid EVER.)
Lurking and sulking on a bridge! Beauty of nature my ass, I am trying to MOPE here.
I am in a lift full of people. And yet I lurk. And sulk.
This picture is kind of a mystery. It is one of a series, and in all the others ones I am there where that red circle is. And yet, in this one? NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. Did I duck? Did I get up to go to the bathroom? OR DID I JUST LURK/SULK MYSELF OUT OF EXISTENCE???
Lurking and sulking at a boat dance! You can tell this is a special sort of lurking and sulking because I braided my hair.
Here it looks like I am actually talking to someone! I bet I was super lurky and sulky while I did it, though.
Even when direct eye contact seems imminent, destroying valuable lurking opportunities, the sulk remains.
>:| stop taking my picture I am busy being morose >:|||
Dinnertime sulking is the worst kind of sulking.
Teacher, fellow students: *happy!*
Ish: *sulk*
Oblivious guy: *oblivious*
I am but a speck in this picture. Nevertheless, the sulk shines on like the crazy diamond it is.
And my all time favourite:
Everyone else: Hurray, we are enjoying our trip!
Ish: *Morrissey*
Oh, Past Self. A winner was you.
* That last one may not be universal.
** Yes, indeedy, I used to like Linkin Park! My favourite song was "Papercut." My song search this morning reminded me that I also liked Limp Bizkit. And Weezer. And Enya. Oh, boy, did I love me some Enya.
*** Short version: I loved this girl, she didn't love me back, BIG GAY DRAMZ.