Summer Ennui: August 23, 1995

The following entry is a decent summation of my summer between sophomore and junior years in high school. Does every 16-year-old read On the Road? Is it mandatory reading for American youth? 

Tuesday, August 22, 1995

Dear Diary,

I’m not mentally ready for school. I’m reading On the Road. Even when I don’t feel like it, I must write: thoughts, songs, phrases, memories, stories, poems. Tilda was supposed to come home today. She’s been gone for almost a month.

I went downtown with Tula and Emma. I saw Bradley playing at the market but we didn’t talk.

I can’t relate to who I was before this summer, from my birth to the end of spring this year. It scares me that I remember so little about wonderful (and shitty) times I’ve had. This summer was the first time that I lived in the present and dreamed about the future without looking back into the past. I feel detached from it even though I usually dwell on the past.

I was whole and peaceful this summer. That made it easy for me to meet people and experience life especially since I wasn’t letting my past bog me down. But I met Bradley and let my mind get carried away with thoughts of him.

It seems that you start out whole and full and good - and you give your mind and heart to someone and in doing so you lose those to them and become a “shell of a person.” Sometimes you think you’re giving your soul away but that is the one thing that is free and can break away from anything that makes you crazy or sad or that makes you lose your sense of self.

I want to sing and play music. There’s something awesome about playing out thoughts and emotions through an instrument. I once asked Emma and Bradley if they thought about how awesome it is that a guitar can make such beautiful sounds and that you can hear someone’s whole being in a song. They gave me weird looks and said, “No.”

I hate it when you try to say something and people don’t hear you and make you feel like a spaz. It’s funny when you write or think something bizarre and your facial expression is calm and neutral. I’m being random but I think this journal should be for my real thoughts, not just “Oh, I went to a keg and it’s December 6th and I ate an apple.”

Love, Meghan

Excerpt from Minor: Volume One The Journals of Meghan McDonnell

Novice: Volume Two The Journals of Meghan McDonnell

Limbo: Volume Three The Journals of Meghan McDonnell