Jen's Journal

I was a rambunctious child once, climbing on Eucalyptus trees, always dreaming of a faraway place. I was loud, opinionated, and strong-willed. People said I got it from my mother, but it was something more. To be unsatisfied with life at a young age isn’t unfortunate, it’s ambitious. There was a desperation, a yearning inside that this stoic fragile life I was born into was not what I was meant for.

The vastness of a wilting existence terrified me. I would shout at the world and made them feel as I did, disappointed with a wave of great anger rising, building until it blows up in their face and we’re all left feeling defeated.

Dreaming of a glittering cosmos, I kept my nose in books and made myself smaller, demure, and submissive because shouting never solved anything.

            With exuberant precision and calculating determination, I fell deeply in love with words. It was an ethereal feeling, a clairvoyant journey that metabolized in an orbit that made me dizzy, kept me breathless.

            If you asked my family to describe me in one word, they would say emotional. I’d say empathetic. For every emotion I had, whether that be distressed, blissful, or furious, I would cry. I deciphered this as sensitivity to the lower-class world I was born into. There was something more though, a resentment for being brought into the world in the first place.

When I was nine my mother expressed that she thought many times of having an abortion. And now, whenever the brazen world is harsh and unforgiving, I want to shout and say, “why didn’t you go through with it, you coward!”

I’m in a perpetual state of peaceful sadness. There are times when I feel happy, infinite, even euphoric, but it is as fleeting as our lives are compared to the age of the universe.

When I grow up, I want to be just like the rambunctious child I once was. I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut to avoid confrontation. I’m sick of being scared of my own shadow, scared of telling people no. I’m done apologizing for everything, even if it is not my burden.

*****

This was inspired by Lana del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. Give it a listen if you haven’t!