Diary Friday: “I feel so dead and dreary.”

This is kind of a short one – wrapping up the entry from last week. I continue to blab on about the most Important Thing on the Planet: filling out my senior yearbook blurb.

January 13

My favorite songs are pretty self-explanatory. I think “Celebrate Life” is really called “Life is a Celebration” but I know what I mean. [Oh man – Betsy – member that song?? It was from the TV show “Fame”. ] I also put The Hall of the Mountain King. [bwahahahahahaha]

My pet peeves speak for themselves. Instead of “authority abusers” I was tempted to write “Mr. Ameoba” – but in my mind those two are one and the same. I also put “Junior Year” down – I knew I was gonna write that even before my junior year ended. [Oooh. You’re psychic, Sheila.]

For “Who do I want to be on a desert island with” I was gonna write “Band-Aid except for Bananarama” [holy crap – that’s hysterical] – but that seemed to me a little bit kinky. 5,000,000 guys and ME?? [Uhm … yes … so what’s the problem here?] So I wrote Matt Broderick [Matt. Not Matthew. Yeah.] He is my #1 most favorite actor living on this earth today.

For my goal – I wrote : To always remain aware – to always have ambition – to always look at the stars.

I don’t know where that came from. I couldn’t ever think of anything to put for my goal that didn’t sound really trite and stupid. “To be an actress” “To get married” “To always succeed”. No – how ’bout “To sound really stupid when I write down my goal”? Besides – to be an actress is what my life will be. It is too personal to me, it makes me feel too emotional to just write “La la la to be an actress la la la” I KNOW that that is my goal for what I’m going to do – but how I’m going to live – how do I want to LIVE my life? So I don’t know where I wrote came from – I just said it – and I mean it – and that’s about the only thing in my blurb that is real – I mean, the Sheila that I am deep down.

When I saw the words “Favorite Hero” there was no one else for me write except Jimmy. [No last name necessary apparently] He is. He is my Hero. My idol. My ideal. [Hon, he made 3 movies and then died. But … okay. He’s your hero. That’s cool!!]

I loved writing my Favorite Hangout – I wrote “Bonnet Shores”. A lot of kids put down stuff like “whereever the party is” – Yeah, nice life. [But … didn’t you party a lot at Bonnet Shores? Why so judgmental?]

Ever since Picnic, so many new things have entered myh life – new people, new places, new feelings, new experiences – I feel so much more alive and excited by life. If I had filled out my senior blurb last year, I don’t think one of my answers would have been what I wrote down now. I didn’t even know that those people existed, that 280 Bonnet Shores was even there – I’d never heard of the play Picnic – and now look at me! All of a sudden!

The hardest part of the blurb was filling out the will. Oh dear. I decided that when I sign all my friends yearbooks – that’s when I’ll tell them how much I love them. I only had a few lines for my will. I had to write really small as it is and I couldn’t leave something to everyone I wanted to – like Stephanie or Keith or Laura –

It took me five drafts to get to my finished product. It was so funny how seriously we all took it.

I have such an awful cold. I look like Death. [Yes. I capitalized it] My nose is red and all chapped. My lips are so chapped that they crack when I smile. I have tan-grey shadows under my eyes and my right eye – maybe I have pink eye or something, but it’s all bloodshot and glassy. So I’m a real beauty queen at this moment.

January 14

I am doing so bad this quarter. Oh my God. Except in English. I’m so scared. But I really don’t care. As long as I pass. As long as I live through these last weeks. Ugh. I feel so dead and dreary. I can’t breathe through my nose. I can’t taste food. Why is everything so awful now? I feel so gross and miserable.

Something happened to me on Friday during school. It all started with that awful TS ordeal. [He was the guy I had been sort of dating – although I have no memory of the “awful ordeal” I reference here] It got me depressed. Then I got worse and worse during study – Sometimes I get so listless. Sometimes nothing seems to matter and everything seems so much bigger than we are. Life is so big. Right now, in my life, I have no enthusiasm for anything. I really do feel dead. I look like a corpse. I am getting terrible grades. My nose is stuffed up. I can’t fuckin’ breathe. I hate it at school. I hate that building. I hate high school so much. Right now, I feel nothing.

When I loved DW, part of the beauty of it was how much I felt. No matter what feeling I was having, it somehow assured me that I was alive. I mean, when I was totally miserable, at least I was feeling something. It was even a little joyous to have that misery because it was so intense. I’d never felt that much before. I was living.

I don’t feel anything now.

I think Brett’s birthday is this month. I’ve got to realize that I’m HUMAN – I can’t help it. I miss him so much.

I love January and February because walking home from the library is so spectacular. I don’t even mind the cold. It’s all part of the freezing beauty of the sunset. On Saturday, I almost cried. I came outside. I had worked 12 to 5 in that stuffy library and this rush of cold air stung my cheeks. There’s snow on the ground and – if I disregarded the stoplights and the paved road – I could completely imagine that I was back in time, in a little colonial town. The church spire across the street – I could see it through the treetops – which looked really dark against the sky. The sun had just set and the whole sky was a really deep blue. Then peeping through the trees behind the church was a flaming orange and crimson sunset – with thick heavy lavendar clouds. And the snow. And the cold. I stood on the steps. The white church glowed bluishly in the dusk, and way way up in the sky next to the steeple was the first glimmering white star. Seeing that star – I felt so full. I stood there staring, and sort of let myself feel a prayer, feel a wish.

On the walk home, I kept that star in view.

I love winter. I love the cold and the exploding sunsets. I feel such wonder.

I think I’d rather feel pain than nothing. I really would.

Today was so awful.

1st period – Math – got back a test – 68
2nd period – Physiology – got back a test – 66
3rd period – English – paper assigned for tomorrow – had to write an in-class intro today (yeah, I was really in the mood after my spectacularly wonderful morning)

Something feels really wrong. Nothing is moving me. I tried to cry when I got home from Phys Wrecks – I really felt like crying inside – but I couldn’t. I just stared at my face in the mirror. Every study period I sit, head in my arms, TRYING to think – pray – find something that makes me happy – or sad.

I feel like I need to see Brett. Let him call. I need him now. I think about seeing him again, and my heart flutters – I feel shivery and strange – seeing his face – his real face – touching him, talking to him, being with him – I miss him. Maybe seeing him again will make me start feeling again. I have tears in my eyes. I miss him. I really need him to call me. He probably won’t. But I ache for it anyway.

Look what I found today. I wrote this the day after my junior year ended. I totally forgot I had written this:

“When life overwhelms me –
When my entire existence revolves around a sterile brick building called High School –
When it begins to seem as though I am taking time out from school to go home –
When I start to convince myself that because I fail one quiz I am destined to be an apple seller –
And that because I didn’t go to the Prom it’s time to think about convents –
I wonder.
But then I remember –
End of EXAM WEEK Junior Year
Going to the beach at sunset
Dancing hysterically on the shore, jeans rolled up
While the sky explodes in the west –
And the silvery foam whirls around our toes –
We run madly on the sand
As darkness gently rains down.
The stars, and the tinsel moon, and the ocean reflecting
the liquid orange-gold-crimson
And us – my wonderful friends and I –
celebrating our freedom, our youth
The sky was so vast it overwhelmed me.
I am just on the threshold – OF WHAT?”

I wish I knew who I was. Oh yeah, I found out today: I got “Best Actress” (yippee). Is that who I am? I feel so dead today. I’m tired of everything.