So for my Creative Non-Fiction class I have an assignment where I'm supposed to write two contrasting scenes - both showing a different identity I have when I'm with certain people or in certain situations.
The first thing I thought of was who I am when I'm around any friends from high school. You know how my facial expressions explain everything and I shake my head with disapproval? Well, it's usually ten times more frequent when I'm with anyone from high school. With a handful of exceptions, most of them are pretty shallow relationships that I always wish I could change. I want my friends to know who I really am, and who I really live for and wish that they could experience the same things. But when opportunities arise I chicken out, with the same old weakness I have of being a people-pleaser. And our conversations end up being about something very generic or gossip about the people we know - two things I don't particularly enjoy participating in.
This assignment somehow inspired me to pull out my boxes of old things I kept from my high school years all the way back to my junior high years. And lo and behold, I came across a diary/journal I had kept back in middle school.
I didn't plan to, but I read the whole thing. I didn't fill the book, which was no surprise(I never finished writing in a journal until my senior year of high school), but what I read intrigued me. There were a number of things I knew I'd find in there, but there were a good number of things I wrote that kind of surprised me - either because I didn't know I thought that way back then or because there were some things that hadn't changed about me.
One common theme I seemed to pick up on besides my boring "I did this today" spiel was that I was really imprisoned by my own fears. Fear drove me a lot more than I remember. I don't remember being so scared to do or say certain things for the sake of keeping peace and harmony amongst my relationships or for the sake of looking "less cool" than I already was. I identified myself very interestingly - I always thought I wasn't as cool as any of my friends, but I never thought of myself as a loser because I clearly knew who I was in Christ. And my identity in Christ was what kept me from trying to do certain things to "fit in" with the popular crowd. I hung out with the popular crowd, but I never felt like I was truly one of them.
I actually laughed out loud at a whole bunch of stupid things I wrote - or maybe not stupid, but at least the way I wrote it sounded really silly. For example, I wrote about the time my ridiculous 8th grade English teacher yelled at me and made me cry for something I felt I was unjustly threatened for. In my diary/journal I told the story of what happened and then ranted about how incredulous it was, and at the very end of the rant I suddenly wrote, "I'll pray to God to change his hard heart." Hahaha I was so weird.
I realized later on that I was actually procrastinating from doing my actual assignment, but it was nice to check in and say hello to my old self. Just...if God ever takes me away unexpectedly, please don't read my junior high school journals. I'd be so embarrassed - although, it might explain some things about me that you didn't know, but I don't know if the risk outweighs the cost. You can read my high school/college ones. Just not my junior high ones.
Dang. I still have to figure out what I'm going to write for my Creative Non-Fiction assignment.
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