[lyg10] summer of ’99;

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

This so very clearly follows on from last week’s post that very little background is needed, particularly considering yesterday’s “ten artists”.

21st August 2003
It’ll be like leaving high school all over again, only this time I’m leaving town.

I was never one of the popular kids. In fact, there was a time when I was as far removed as you can get, with all the mental scarring that entails. Something changed in my last year of school. I wouldn’t say I became accepted. There was no positive act… the dynamic just shifted I guess, and I had friends, and motivation, and plenty of homework, and I was happier than I’ve ever been.

When I was sixteen I was trying to kill myself. When I was eighteen I was on Prozac. But everything was fine the summer I was seventeen.

And then I left, and went to uni. A year early, or the earlier of the years you can go straight from school. A few of us did. And we all promised to keep in touch, but things never work out that way.

I firmly believe that all parties concerned mean these things at the time. Circumstance conspires to get in the way: people are busy, people are lazy, people are wary of breaking longterm radio silence to ask if you want to meet up for a drink. And I tell myself it’s easier now, we never had text messages or MSN when I was a lass, but there’s still that niggling voice in the back of my head that reminds me it all fell apart when we were living up the road, what’s it going to be like when I’m two trains and a bus away from here?

And it’s all very well to say well, this way you find out who your true friends are, but it’s kind of nice to have this huge crowd of acquaintances you can run into in the pub or at a gig or in the supermarket or pass a pleasant fifteen minutes with on the train once every six months, and to have 180 numbers in your phone only ten of which you ever use (two of those being your local taxi firm and the Chinese takeaway).

Other people don’t make the effort and I’m too scared of imposing. Actions are supposed to speak louder than words – well maybe I can blame my necessity for hearing, umprovoked, that I am loved, and needed, on being a writer. I suffer from a crippling lack of self-confidence, and my world is going to fall apart.

This is the legacy of not being one of the popular kids. I can’t believe there are people out there who would want to deliberately seek out my company when it’s not the easiest thing in the world. And I’m not seeking sympathy, or assurances, that’s just the way things are in my head.

Life is a constant litany of things to worry about.