There's something really weird about a twenty-two-year-old woman writing in the same blog that contains her high-school-sophomore angst. I feel like I'm disturbing a haunted tomb or something. If I make too much noise, the puffy-haired ghost of Teenage Hayley might climb out of my laptop screen The Ring-style and yell at me for liking Top 40 and be disappointed that I still haven't figured out how to shape my eyebrows. In fact, I can name at least fifty things she'd berate me for. Some examples:
- I'm not a rich and famous author and I don't really desire to be one
- I'm not married to my friend's guitar-playing big brother (he now has a really trashy upper arm tattoo of the name of the city we grew up in; dodged a bullet there)
- I don't eat cheese
- I don't think enjoying reality TV is a symptom of being stupid
- I own a romper
- I maybe voted for Nader in 2008?
We still like Chipotle and Harry Potter and thinking we're better than everyone, though, so not all is lost. Anyway, this just feels weird. Typing this. Posting this. Like driving by a house you used to live in and knowing exactly how many stairs are inside but also knowing you're not allowed to go in.
I used to make lists here-- about things I wanted to accomplish or how I wanted to improve myself-- and jotting one down on a Panera napkin this afternoon is what reminded me of this old abandoned blog. One of my present-day goals (alongside learning to actually wash dishes instead of rationalizing that you can use the same bowl over and over if you never take it downstairs) is to do things I like to do. I like reading and listening to the radio and wearing jewelry and eating spinach, so why do I avoid doing those things? Writing about my life is not a chore. It's something I like to do. But I've stopped doing it.
I think it's because I have a hard time treating the present like it's a real thing that really counts. Right now I'm saving money (in theory... trying to... thinking about starting to...) so I can move to Los Angeles and Begin My Real Life, but I know I need to stop thinking that way. I treated high school like the purgatory before college, and college like the waiting room before adulthood, and now I keep thinking of my bedroom and my car and my clothes and my city as temporary. That's so unhealthy! Now is the only now. And even though that sounds like the title of a bad '80s rock ballad, it's how I'm trying to live from here on out. Ohio isn't LA but it's still real life. So I'm going to spend my real life doing what I like to do. I'm going to wear dresses and have living plants around the house and talk to human beings. And maybe, like, write in a blog. Maybe.
Is that cool with you, fifteen-year-old self?
