Disillusioned by the lack of potential soulmates at my high school, amidst other teenage letdowns
This newsletter is the second in a series of three essays about my freshman-year journal. You can read the first essay here.
I had originally written that the second and third essays would be coming last weekend- my apologies. I’ve been trying to re-enter Argentina for a while now, and last week I got the happy news that I can return. As a result I’ve been taking a bus across Uruguay, and a ferry across the river that separates the two countries, and all this to say, not writing.
But, there are no more countries that I’m trying to get into (for the time being), so I can promise that the third essay really will be in your inbox tomorrow❤️
Sunday November 26, 2006, 3:28pm, My bedroom
“Then again, when I went up to get a Bible, he was looking at me and we did the whole eye contact thing.”
-14-year-old me upon noticing that my friend’s church was in fact a treasure trove of undiscovered talent of the male persuasion
I was on the hunt for my soulmate, though I’m not sure what I was planning on doing upon meeting him (sitting next to each other in homeroom maybe?)
The search was documented in a rigorously joking manner, but a joke made 500x too often to be just a joke.
I’d never held a boy's hand, and yet the prospect of meeting said soulmate was imminent.
This both describes my current personality to a T, and makes perfect sense. My parents met in high school band when my mom was 14. The same high school band that I was currently in, and the same age that I currently was.
At the time, meeting my soulmate felt inevitable. Now, my primary emotion is thank fuck I didn’t marry anyone I met in high school at 14.
While that worked out nicely for Mr. and Mrs. Ames, my own options were as follows:
On Wednesday, November 15 Juan approached me in PE and leaned in all close to ask if I had a boyfriend. I told him that I did not. The exact response was, “Ummm, no.”
To which Juan informed me, “Do you know Bryan? Yeah, he likes you, you should ask him.”
To which I responded, “Ummm, OK.”
I vaguely knew Bryan as a tall stocky guy who I was once on the same football team in PE with.
I was unsure as to what I was supposed to ask Bryan. If he wanted to eat lunch together in the quad? If he believed in soulmates? If he knew that his friend Juan was pimping him out?
Needless to say, I did not ask Bryan.
Bryan did however sit down next to me during Skills for Success (because apparently the secret to success is a blend of typing, driver’s training, and sex ed), and he asked if we had PE together.
To which I replied, “Ummm, yeah.”
I was being my best, most articulate self, so it’s no wonder Bryan had a crush on me.
He proceeded to flirt with my friend and ignore me for the rest of the period.
I waged a philosophical debate in my journal about why Bryan might possibly like me when there were so many sluts at our school he could choose from.
I concluded that Juan was most likely inventing the whole thing out of boredom, and made an effort to avoid Bryan at all possible costs, out of fear he might try to hold my hand.
On Friday, September 28 “Mike totally asked for my phone number!”
However it was high school, so instead of just asking for my number, he had to beat around the bush. But, like, the furthest possible bush away.
How many numbers did I think his phone could hold? He asked as we walked to Biology together. I’d watched enough Sabrina the Teenage Witch to know where this was heading.
“Probably millions of billions,” I responded, thoughtfully.
And although I’d logged in my journal every sentence Mike and I had exchanged since meeting.
This here, this now, was simply moving too far, too fast.
Just as he said that he needed to get my number, I squealed, “Let’s go in the back door of Biology today!” and skipped (literal skipping, like through fields of wheat) as quickly as I could to the back door of the classroom which was, you guessed it, an escape route closer than the front.
With admirable persistence, he asked if I knew of any good movies playing because he wanted to see something that weekend.
I did not know what movies were playing.
I proceeded to take all possible precautions to ensure that Mike and I did not go to the movies.
In my journal, I make it mean lots of things about me that I’d never held someone else’s hand. However I’m unable to piece together that I quite literally ran away at every possible opportunity.
Friday, December 15: “I’m such a terrible, awfull persan!!! Today at school I had 2 main goals… avoid Tyler, and avoid Mike!!!
Also I was avoiding Max to, although it wasn’t a main goal!”
There’s also very serious repeated insistence that I didn’t have a crush on anybody and wasn’t in love with anybody or felt butterflies for anybody. After which, I proceeded to write about five different guys in elaborate detail.
Despite all this avoiding and intense lack of crushes, there are a considerable amount of printed photos taped to the pages. They’re images I’d found online of boys at my high school who were in the running for potential soulmate.
This both mortifies current-me, and makes me wonder how I managed to print said contraband in the days of one family computer, multiple siblings, and zero private time.
A few pages later I go on to explain that I googled the crushes at my dad’s work, and the results were “VERY succesfull!”
I can’t help but cringe and wonder if the results were quite as successful as I’d originally claimed them to be, seeing as 14-year-old me definitely didn’t know how to delete her search history.
Do you think my brother will become a writer? I asked my dad as he poured batter into the waffle iron on November 25.
It was Saturday morning, and my father was blissfully unaware of my reconnaissance mission. I was sussing out the competition. Ie: my brother who constantly managed to be both funnier and better looking than me. It would be absolutely unfair if he got writing as well.
At least, that’s how I interpret the conversation as I read it back seventeen years later. There is also the chance that I’m completely oblivious to the fact that spending every waking hour writing in my journal could be some sort of indication that I may one day become a writer.
My dad says he’s not sure if my brother will be an author, but he figures I probably will.
I write in my journal that I’d thought about that but I would definitely write a story about boys, and it would be really embarrassing to have my parents read that.
Plus, I wasn’t any good at writing long stories, like what was I supposed to write about?
“A girl that really wants to meet her soulmate and wishes that he would hurry up, she knows that she should use this time to discover herself and become whole without a man, then she’ll find her true love, but she's getting impatient and wondering if her “one” got ran over or something!”
I go on to say that it vaguely resembles my life story.
Jesus Christ, you’re 14 years old:
A) Simmer down
B) I’m 31, get in line
As I read, there’s this natural intrigue complete obsession with wanting to meet my soulmate, even though I’d never held a boy’s hand.
And I can’t help but draw comparisons between who I was then, and who I am now.
I’m definitely still guilty of using perfectionism as a cop out.
It’s not worth the potential awkwardness of trying and failing if he isn’t the one, said 14-year-old me.
I already know he couldn’t handle my feelings, so I’m not even going to show him, says 31-year-old me.
I will never speak perfect Spanish, so there’s no point in even practicing, says 31-year-old me.
This essay could be better, so I’m not even going to write it, says 31-year-old me.
There’s other places I’ve stayed the same as well, like hand holding. Even though I’d never done it, my teenage self had a hunch it was gonna be good. And it turns out she was right.
I’ve changed my views on certain things too. Like soulmates, I do still believe in them, but not in the same way I used to.
I don’t think you find them, as much as you create them.
Of course you have to find them in the sense that maybe you come across them on the dance floor, or, like the plot of a musical I penned during high school- maybe your hands touch when you both bend down to pick up a dropped pencil and subsequently burst into song.
But I now believe that where you find them is actually the least interesting part of the whole thing.