Data Dump: A Diary Entry from When I Was 17
January 15, 2015
I’ve got so much going on! Life will never cease!
I think sometimes you can tell how happy you are based on how the air tastes. If you’re unhappy, the air is bitter. If you’re happy, the air is sweet. In California, the air is always light and fresh. In Chicago, the air is heavy and strong.
I don’t like this pen.
March 26, 2024
At the moment, it feels like I can’t consume enough. Enough water, enough food, enough music, enough books, enough videos, enough showers. Nothing seems to make me feel calm or at peace. Even when I think my mind is going to get back on its saddle, I’m toppling over again and I fall into a pit of endless stuff. Random songs, YouTube videos, and TikToks. I switch between three different books (one fantasy, one fiction, one non-fiction audiobook) so that I never go without someone else’s words floating in my head. It’s almost like I can’t handle being alone - alone with my own thoughts, alone in the silence, alone in my company.
So naturally, I asked myself, how the heck can I reconnect with myself? What’s the next best thing? If I’m avoiding 26-year-old self at all costs, maybe I can visit my 17-year-old self and conduct some emotional tourism with my own past. The trip costs me the physical energy of shoving clothes aside in my closet to get to the box of diaries I’ve been collecting since 2014 (post-trash bag incident), and the emotional energy of flipping through passages. I’m so whiny, I speak in such absolutes, and I’m clearly so desperate to be liked. If I didn’t know any better (or pretended to know better), I’d say nothing’s changed!
In January of 2015, my dad was still living in Santa Monica, California, and I had experienced one of the best summers of my life when I went to visit him. He worked at a hotel right on Santa Monica pier, where everything feels so cinematic. Los Angeles felt magical - I spent my time running to the beach, seeing movies, going to the theater to see weird plays, and eating at nice restaurants. Every day was sunny, every person was beautiful, and the air tasted so delicious in my lungs. I was hopelessly in love with the idea of what my life would look like if I spent the remainder of my young adult life near the ocean instead of Lake Michigan. I applied to colleges in California and dreamed about who I would become in the LA sunshine.
Welp, fast forward to right now. I never went to college in California. I’m sitting in my room in my apartment in Ravenswood*, with my current journal open to a blank page. It’s almost hard to reimagine my obsession with Santa Monica and LA because of how I feel now about living in Chicago. My new mantra is: If I’m not living in Chicago, I’m dead (or I moved to Europe).
What strikes me about this passage is how it begins - “I’ve got so much going on! Life will never cease!” Like girl, get it together for real.
I sometimes like to reflect on how easy I had it when I was a teenager - only needing to worry about keeping myself alive and going to school. But when I was that age, I genuinely stressed about a bunch valid things: my friends, my family, my grades, what I was going to do for a job, and where I was going to attend college.
So much has changed in the last 9 years, but some things will remain constant: my love for journaling, my ability to stress about the little things, and my fixation on finding the perfect pen.
I can’t help but giggle at the last thought 17-year-old Lexie wrote on the page: “I don’t like this pen.” I always put so much focus on what type of pen and paper I use to write down my thoughts. I love the little materials that we use every day to complete the most mundane tasks - like little artifacts of my own historical exhibit that is my every day life.
I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better pens, and I’ve gotten used to the Chicago air, and grown to love it more than any other atmosphere in the world. Until next Data Dump, I hope you can find peace within your own thoughts this week. And if you are struggling to connect with yourself right now, then maybe take a trip to visit yourself at, say, wherever you were 9 years ago?
*My favorite joke to make about my neighborhood is (and free feel to steal) “Who is Raven and why do we keep talking about her Wood?”
