Old Diaries

I'm reading through old diaries, just to see what I've got for poetry that might be salvageable for the last semester of school. It's intriguing, sometimes entertaining, and sometimes just painful, to be honest. Some parts sad, some strange, some uncanny. Like the page where I mention that a close friend had admitted to being raped, and then at the end of the page start on recalling the events of the rest of the day; I saw Michael Gizzi & Clark Coolidge read on campus that evening. Weird.

I was also wallowing in a broken heart for the beginning of that semester and I have this quote about that:
"To be mad is empowering. To be sad is distracting, especially when it comes to love."
Trying to pump myself up and out of the funk.

Then there was this section, that floors me. I was at a Eng dept party at Steve and Jennifer's and this woman named Melissa (who I can't recall today) introduced herself and "she said when I read at the poetry reading at the Bear Brew, she was sitting with all guys who were completely ga-ga over me. They thought I was beautiful & wanted her to introduce herself to me so that I'd start talking to them. That's a very nice thing to hear, considering I've been downing myself big time about my appearance, what with liking [xxx] and all."

I have to put xxx because I still talk to xxx and I'm not sure if he even has time to read blogs, it doesn't sound like it, but I don't want him to know he was in my journal back in 2000.

Anyway, the next entry is bad bad bad. The whole thing with the good friend being raped and me making a very bad decision that night (based on not believing what that woman Melissa had said about me) and dollar fifty pitcher night combined into a big drama that had Jenny not speaking to me for a while, especially since I had ditched her and made her walk home the day after our friend had reported that she was raped while walking alone at night. What an a-hole I was.

See, now I'm all PTSD about it. But it was just weird how college life, and writing life, and love life all converged and exploded. Oh, and I got in a fight with my dad at this time, because I had also gone home for Easter. "I got in a huge fight with my father who sucks."

Christ, could the journal entry be any more painful?

Anyway, just something to say. I try not to put too many personal stories up here, but this one I thought was so strangely significant, so I wanted to share.