Hello all! Sorry for missing a post last week. Here's what's been going down.
We had a good Christmas with the WHOLE family here and did some Christmassy wintery stuff. It was fantastic. I've honestly seen more movies in the past week than I've probably seen in my entire life. (That's a major hyperbole, but for those of you that don't know I don't particularly like movies; I can never focus on them, and going to see movies in theaters makes me extremely anxious most of the time.) But they were all fantastic; The Man Who Invented Christmas (I mean, I can't just NOT enjoy a movie about Charles Dickens), The Last Jedi (I'm in love with Star Wars I'm in love with Star Wars I'm in love with Star Wars), and The Greatest Showman. (That one was more good than fantastic, but it was still a really good time, would watch again, the soundtrack is jammin', and it helped me heal my damaged relationship with Zac Efron. Also, who knew Hugh Jackman could dance that well?) And hey, before that I saw Wonder with Morgan and her mom and I was shocked at how much I liked that movie even though I was super anxious that night.
We've spent a lot of time chilling out. Like, a lot. I, a person who also doesn't watch a lot of TV, have also been reminded of the beauty of quality television. (The Friends truly are always there for me and Psych is the ultimate television program. Disney Channel throwbacks were enjoyed, but the Camp Rock films while comforting are noticeably less high-quality than the High School Musical films. It's beyond noticeable that they are not Kenny Ortega films.)
Oh yeah, and I got a biopsy. It was mildly stressful but now there's one more random thing in my life that I've done that I can overdramatize.
Anyway, here I am again relatively ill. However, I NEED to get better for tomorrow because I may go sit in on Basic's rehearsal for Little Shop of Horrors. Which I cannot do if I am ill. So PLEASE PRAY A LOT because I could jam out to Alan Menken by myself or I could jam out to Alan Menken with the most talented kids in the world.
It's a new year, new face, new makeup, new focus on writing and my life and happiness. I have been letting a lot of things get to me too much. When I get back to school, I'm reading more, writing more, working more, going on walks to my favorite places or just around, I'm making myself busy because when I'm not constantly going I'm losing my mind, and my current schedule is not making me as busy as I typically like to be, so I have to do it myself. Think of all the progress that can be made!
Anyway, today I am going to speak my TRUTH. My vulnerable single teenage girl truth. I, being a mature eighteen years old, am very wise. And I genuinely believe there are not enough people looking out for teenagers. Do adults just forget what it's like or something? Why do people treat children like they're not people? They're still people, just young underdeveloped people. They still have problems. Don't tell a teenager--scratch that, don't tell a person--that they don't have real problems. There's no such thing as a fake problem. If something is bothering you, that's a problem. No matter what it is. No one is looking out for the teenagers. No one is listening to the teenagers. No one is speaking to them. Teenagers need LOVE like any other human. They need to feel HEARD. If only there was someone writing for the teenagers. Like, speaking their truth for them or something. I wonder who could do that.
To get more specific about the teenage wisdom I want to share today, I was born a writer and a storyteller. I used to narrate life when I was super young, I would make up stories verbally or on paper, and I have been journaling since the beginning of time. Journaling is very therapeutic in that it is a way to think out loud privately; physically feeling and writing out your thoughts does it in a way nothing else can. It's also an excellent writing exercise, because if you write about your life, you don't have to worry about developing plot. The plot is already there. You can't get it wrong. All you have to do is find the most accurate and beautiful way to tell it, and I really like the opportunity to write a personal narrative and try to tell it to the best of my ability without an audience.
As a teenage girl who is very honest about herself and her feelings, I also know that just about every tragic story begins with, "So there was this guy."
Don't take that the wrong way, but most of my sad stories have to do with some guy I was tripping over, or someone else was tripping over, or a disaster of that sort. This is to the writer and journal-writer in your teenage girl heart. As a young girl first feeling an attraction for a boy, in middle school, people called me boy crazy, and I didn't really get it at the time because I am a WILDLY loyal person and I will stick with someone until they destroy me, and even a little bit after that sometimes. I've always defined "boy crazy" as just chasing after boys in general, and I was never really the type of person to jump from guy to guy. But now looking back on it, I know what they were talking about.
I would write about him a lot and think about him obsessively and I wish I could go back to preteen Lizzo and tell myself that he isn't everything.
I still have the journals from back then and his name and stories are in there way too much. I want to let you young teenage girls know some things.
Please do write about him, because he is a part of your life and there is no reason you should pretend your feelings don't exist.
But I even remember writing about having some problems with who he was, and write about them as if it was my job to fix those things about him.
If you have a problem with who a guy is, that you used to really care about, you are not obligated to like him still just because you liked him then.
I think that's a good reason why you should try to control how much you let him consume your thoughts anyway, because if it does get to that point it's almost like he's a part of you and you may be afraid of letting that go, because it would feel like letting go a part of yourself, and a part of yourself that you previously really liked.
But he is a PART of your narrative. He is not the narrative itself.
I'm not entirely certain what did it, but when I was thirteen I kind of came to my senses and thought, "What the heck am I doing?"
I dropped the guy. My friends became a really important part of my life, and I had really good friends that I started appreciating more, and it makes me so happy to think about those eighth grade friends because I have always had an unconscious appreciation for female relationships and I love having my closest friends be my fellow girls. I read more. I wrote more and developed a lot of stories, most of which didn't stick but it exercised that part of my mind. I LOVED being in choir. I started thinking about my future at Basic, and that year the mission age changed, so for the first time in my life that became a possibility for me.
I became a more diverse person once he was gone. I'm not saying he has to be gone for everyone. He had to be gone for me. But the well-balanced life is the ideal life. So many bad periods of my life were because I was too focused on one thing, and that one thing was almost always one guy. This is youth! Youth is the time to figure out your own personal self, to try things so you can find out who you really are. Why focus on one thing when this is your time to really live and figure out where you want the rest of your life to be.
When you write, write about him. But write about so much more.
I got better at taking up writing about school, family, friends, choir, color guard, EVERYTHING that was happening instead of ONE THING that was happening. I wrote about a guy if there was a guy, but I wrote about everything else. I told my full story instead of just one part of it. I frequently even just write my random opinions and thoughts on things. Life is so much better when it is well-balanced. That has never not been true. Tell your story the way it is really happening.
Write about the way things feel. Write about the way it feels to run laps with the color guard, how it felt in your lungs and your legs and your heart and your smile. Write about the exact way you started and continued crying when your friends broke your heart. Write about the way the air feels on the choir's yearly trip to California. Write about the way your heart hurts when the sun hits the grass in a specific way in the morning and it feels exactly like the morning of a band competition, a moment you will never be able to go back to. Write about what made you cry in the shower. Write about what made you smile when you were just sitting at home with your family. Write about the moment you decided to take the risk. The moment you knew exactly what you needed to do about a given situation. And heck, write about how it felt when your eyes locked with his and you were just sitting at a piano smiling like an idiot because you were all caught up in your feelings for a second.
Life is so interesting. Bask in all of it.
The moral of my story today is that he isn't everything and I wish my poor younger self knew that. When I let myself live outside of a box, I really live.
Thanks and much love.
--Lizzo
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