The Misery of Youth

Dear Readers,

I rode into the 1990's holding to the dirty flannel shirt wrapped around my older sister's waist. The very early years were lost in my childhood, but I made up for them quickly during my awkward tweens. Full of angst and hormones and armed with a very small collection of grunge cd's, I traded my bright Cross-Colors Malcolm X shirts (because no one can identify with the trials of civil injustice quite like a 12 year old white girl from Rupert, Idaho), for plaid shirts, thrift store cardigans, and a pair of fake Doc Martins.

I was reminded by all of this a few weekends ago, when late one night with Shay out with the boys and Lucas asleep in bed, I found myself watching the Cameron Crowe documentary "PJ20", about the beginnings and goings on of the band Pearl Jam. Conincidentally, I also dug out all of my old journals that same weekend, and spent a couple of hours being thoroughly entertained by my much younger self.

Like a lot of the music from those days, my journal pages were filled with themes of loathing and longing, a bipolar roller coaster of elation and dispair. I wrote of specific songs during that time, honestly believing that I had problems in common with the likes of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Why not? Why wouldn't a good mormon girl who had never been to a bigger city than Salt Lake have much in common with heroin addicted rock starts? Clearly, it was a time when emotion took presidence over reason.

At the time I was quite sure I was the quintisential misunderstood teenager, and I was eyes deep in a misunderstood generation. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, they were our voice. I remember clearly memorizing the words to Pearl Jam's song "Jeremy", and standing in front of my 9th grade speech class, reciting it as poetry, and sitting down in my seat thinking to myself, "No one in here understands the meaning of that song but me." Ha! Such confidence for someone with such limited life experience.

Later in my teens, while attending Minico High School, I went through some seemingly traumatic surgeries. I had been diagnosed with an extrememly rare skin disorder, which required a sizeable piece of my scalp to be removed. In preparation for the removal, a tissue expander was implanted on the left side of my head, and every week I had injections of saline put into the expander. It was extraordinalry painful, the stretching of my skin. By the time it was filled to capacity, it was about the size of a softball. My hair was cut short. My peers were cruel. My soccer career was over. Conincidentally, that awful band "The Presidents of the United States" released the song "Lump" during this time; I hate them still. I remember coming out of the second surgery, after everything was removed, and looking in the mirror to a horror scene. A nylon stocking of sorts holding my mess of a head together, my face swollen and my eyes blackened, and all I could do was cry. A mistake from the doctor resulted in more surgeries than originally planned, going through my senior year of high school. The strangest thing about this experienece, is that not a word about it was written in my journals. Not one, single word. In fact, this might be the first time I've written about the experience at length. Instead there is page after page of emotional vomit; entries of length on music; horrible poetry and drawings concerning crush's and my prettier friends of whom I was green with jealousy. The later pages desciribing my questions in faith and the beginnings of an existential crisis.

As The nineties ended I was entering adulthood. A year and a half at Utah State, a stint in Washington D.C., and then finding myself in Boise helped to curb my self-loathing and I found that maybe life wasn't as bad as I had assumed. The music scene made a transition along side me; while Pearl Jam survived, the grunge scene in general was lost. I found what I needed more and more in hip-hop and indy-rock. I stuck to some classics (The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, The Smith's...a whole lotta "The's"), and embraced a music culture that was bigger than me and I understood it as such. My journals were not so desperate, but far more introspective.

So after watching that documentary, 20 years of a single band, I was touched and a bit emotional. I would love to be able to go back, and whisper to my younger self that things aren't that bad. Yes, there are people who are mean, who will say awful and horrible things. Yes, there is saddness and dark times. Yes, there are times even when you're surrounded by people who love you that you will feel disengaged and lonely. But overall, the majority of days will be good days, and that yes, you are beautiful, and yes, you are talented, and yes, you will be a catalyst to others. Most importantly, I would ask myself to please throw away that disgusting flannel shirt and dress with some dignity because, let's be honest, nothing says "desperate" more than a pair of fake Doc Martin's.

Sincerely,
h.