All through my childhood, I was an avid writer. Every once in a while, I’ll be releasing something I wrote when I was a kiddo. For your viewing and critiquing pleasure, I have annotated a journal entry that I wrote when I was 15 years old. Parts of me are so glad that I’ve matured past this. Parts of me are afraid that I haven’t. Here we go.

I hate [redacted female name]. (A lot of my journal entries start like this.) What an absolute bitch. (I was just learning how to swear correctly.) One date. One date was all it took for her to decide that the beautiful relationship that we had been developing (About two weeks of texting) wasn’t worth the trouble. I mean, how can you tell that you don’t like someone from one time? (I had my parents bring me to this date.) I met her at the WT game (Go Buffs!) and she was with [her friend’s name]. We only hung out for like fifteen minutes and I barely even talked to her. (That may have been the issue at hand.) How can she tell? I just like her so so much (Translation: She is so,CE so pretty) and I don’t know how to get over this (I’ll find out in about three sentences). She said that she still wants to be friends, but how can I be friends with someone who ripped my heart out and stomped on it? (I had a bad habit of thinking that a girl I liked owed me a relationship because I was nice to them.) I guess I need to just get over it. (How?) I started talking to this girl named [other name redacted]. (Poof! Over it!) She’s pretty cool. I bet this can be how I get over [redacted]. Maybe my problem is that I only date girls who don’t live in Panhandle (my hometown), so they don’t really know me. (I wore really tight jeans and listened to a lot of Brand New and wrote terrible song lyrics.) I need someone who can really give me intellectual exercise. (I also was really convinced that I was going to be a great philosopher.) Maybe I’ll just die alone. I’m pretty depressed now. (I think slightly bummed was a more appropriate term.) I hope that things work out with [redacted]. (They didn’t.) Maybe she’s the one I’ve been looking for. (She wasn’t.)

Love always,

Jacob

Hindsight: I think that the most important lesson that I can take from this journal entry is that women certainly don’t owe me anything for being attracted to them. Also, I’m so glad that this person (who is a great person, and definitely not what I called her) was saved from having to date this brooding, pretentious loser.