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2004angels · 13 days

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virtual diary entry #1

I turned 20 a few days ago and I thought I'd be mourning my teens more than I am. I'm not as sad as I'd believe I'd be over the fact I am no longer what is considered "young". I've exited teenhood but I still feel young. It probably has to do with young teenagers often viewing 20 year olds as old (at least I did) and now I am 20 myself but was recently young and in the mindset of being young so now I view myself as being kinda old. But yeah.

I among many others didn't have the best teen years. Definitely not the worst, I still have some good memories but I regret that I spent a lot of my teenhood in my room and not having a very good experience with my own presence. I did not have many friends, particularly not very good friends either. Not all bad but ya know. I have had a lot of jealousy for teens who got to party and have somewhat healthy relationships to their best friends and friends. Those who didn't have to be restrained by chronic social anxiety.

Turning 20 feels like what I was so eager to experience as a young girl (saying girl bc that's what I identified as back then). I am feeling that excitement, energy and growth that I was looking forward to so badly as a little kid. I wanted to do great things. I wanted to wear cool clothes, make cool art and be with cool people and have cool boyfriends and travel to cool places. Which I am doing now more or less.

I feel like I'm standing on my own now, and I have people who support me. I feel like the world and the universe are supporting me. Not supporting me in a career, success, search for capital or to justify my place in the world-way by any means, but I feel like I am supported.. let's say spiritually?? I feel like I have people who want me to just be. I feel supported by the fact others out there are also growing up and making art, making friends and making love. I believe in community. I believe others believe in my right to exist.

The greatest strength I believe I am adapting is the ability to stay hopeful despite the ugliness I am exposed to every single day. The strength to not close my eyes. To still raise my voice and not lose hope.

I am growing strong in the strength of hope. I believe that this life is cherished despite the horrors. I believe in others, and I believe in myself. I believe in the people.

Hatred and fear does not get to me as easily as it once did. While I can still view how important it is to speak up against it.

I have felt strength in me grow where in the past I would falter.

I no longer carry resentment for my enemies, and I have learned that anger and resentment are two very different things. I still carry anger for the people who have hurt me. I will probably always carry some sort of anger for the rest of my life, but I will not let it turn into resentment. I do not want to resent someone because I believe that by doing so I look away from their humanity. I will let my anger protect me by distancing myself from them and their actions, but I do not want to form resentment and create a belief that they are any different from me in terms of humanity.

[CW mention of SA in this paragraph]

It's a tricky conversation to have. Because resentment can actually be necessary. Because I don't see how I shouldn't carry resentment for the man who assaulted me at 3 years old. A part of me does not want to look past his humanity, but what humanity does he have left after committing such acts?

But I do not resent my parents for their actions, because I can see the humanity in them. But my anger does not deny their humanity, my anger only respects my own. My anger serves to preserve my own humanity and my person. My anger never seeks to deny or take away from anyone else's humanity or right to be or to exist.

As long as you preserve your humanity I will recognize it. I still carry love for a world where the people who may have hurt me can still make art, love and connection.

I wish for a world that isn't ruled by the inhumane. For I wish to love a world, but today I can only love small parts of it, even if they exist, I wish to love a bigger world, I wish to love more. I wish for what I love to grow.

I wish to not have to have so much resentment. But I need to, in order to preserve humanity and the safety and well being of my fellow people. I can not accept others who throw away their humanity.

I seek to be myself more the coming year.

For a long time I believed that being myself and creating an identity meant to turn myself into a marketed product that could be bought for social capital.

I believed that the clothes I wore and the art I created had to reach other people in order to be valid. But I don't create or dress in order for people to accept me, I do it because I do, because I can, because I have the opportunity to, and because others can as well, and that the art we create can be shared and experienced together.

I believed for a long time that finding community was finding people who accepted you, who tolerated you and deemed you a part of their circle. Like a club.

But community is about coming together, it's a shared sense of coexistence. Being alongside each other because of shared beliefs, views and ideas of the world and ourselves.

Finding community is finding like-minded people. And community is rarely like a club. Community is often just a feeling that there are people who support you. Community doesn't necessarily have to mean that everyone within it are best friends, it doesn't even have to mean that everyone within the community knows each other, the people within it just need to have a sense of mutual understanding and feelings of coexistence.

Community is knowing that others recognize you. Community is knowing within you that they want you in this community, in this coexistence.

I share community with a bunch of people. I enjoy reminding myself of it sometimes. Community can exist on so many planes. There's community simply in the fact we're human. Then there's community in shared human experiences. I have community in womanhood, I have community in being queer. (I will touch on my queerness in another post because I would really like to talk about it but it would take up too much space of what I want to talk about in this post)

I am in the art community, the comics community, the cosplay and convention community, the alternative fashion community, and I'd say there's definitely community in speaking up and protesting for human rights and the climate.

I wish to strengthen my communities the years ahead. I wish to dress to (IMPRESS!!! lmao) communicate my existence and share it with others.

I am thinking about my relationship to material things. I often wonder about the purpose of the things I own. I recently moved houses and found myself in a sea of all my belongings.

I have so many things in my living spaces. I don't view myself as an owner of any of those things, I don't own anything, I just have the role of being the caretaker of the things in my home for as long as I will. But I have a bunch of clothing items I have a bad feeling about, which probably is that I don't feel like it serves any purpose for me. I don't have any use of it, because it probably doesn't help me communicate what I want to communicate.

I have many anime figures that I love. I'm happy to have them in my room. Those I'm not dissatisfied with having. I have so many loona albums that I love, but sometimes I get a bad feeling because I can get very attached to them. I feel like it would be bad for me to lose them and that it would hurt. So I try to sit with that feeling.

I used to think I shouldn't be materialistic. But I think it should be rephrased into saying that one shouldn't want to have ownership or unhealthy attachment to their items. The items you have should always serve you a purpose, and if it doesn't then it's wearing you down. I came to the conclusion that it's more about the intention of a purchase and the usage and purpose that an item serves rather than just the keeping of an item.

I will probably move again soon, and until then I hope I can keep developing my understanding of how I want to use the items I have and what purpose they serve.

Because I'd like to have more clothing items, but in today's world that is said to be bad, because of consumerism. But simply buying clothes doesn't have to be consumerist. I wouldn't say that people who love fashion are consumerist. They obviously can but I'd say it's two completely separate things.

Consumerism is buying new things just to own more things. When someone buys a new item because they feel like they need to they are not thinking about the use of their item, they're putting consumerist and social ideals as the priority.

There's a difference between getting a new item because you don't want to be an "outfit repeater", and getting a new item because it will make you happy and serve a purpose for you, like being able to communicate more ideas with new possible outfits.

For example, someone who's dressing in Decora kei doesn't necessarily have to be consumerist just because they're in possession of so many clothing items. Because it's all about how they use their items. If they were to stop using all their Decora items after one month of wearing it and jumping to buy new things just for the sake of it being new, then that would be consumerist, but if they keep their several different clothing pieces and accessories for years on end, then they're just a lover of their hobby and their fashion.

So I wish to continue to buy clothes I love and have use of many years ahead.

My father gave me a sewing machine as a birthday gift, and as a now 20 year old who wants to express themselves more, I will use that sewing machine to repurpose old items that have lost their purpose to me. So that I can expand my fashion while also living sustainably.

I want to continue communicating my thoughts and ideas more, and continue to strengthen my feelings of community, while also strengthening the communities I am in.

I encourage everyone to strengthen their ability to communicate. Because by communicating we learn to understand each other, and to understand each other is to coexist. And to coexist is to live in peace.

I don't know how to end this entry, but yeah. I will be back! I love to yap and be somewhat pretentious when I do so. But I hope this could provoke some thought within you who read or listened to this and I hope you look forward to my next entry! Whenever it comes.

Bye!

#diary

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