#now safely ensconced in a plastic tote instead of a crumbling cardboard Dell box from 2007

[novelconcepts]

Shoutout to fifteen year old me, who started keeping journals early on in high school. These have the distinction of:

Being written exclusively in pencil

Numbering up to 26 from the midpoint of sophomore year through graduation

Being formatted as a back and forth script-style conversation between me (M) and “my rational side” (R) (bless)

Including a truly perilous amount of quotes the context for which is lost now, but which chronicled any time a girl I found pretty talking to me, any teacher comments I found amusing, and a stupid number of song lyrics

Being the place I worked out my queerness at a truly staggeringly sluggish rate, despite being Gay As Fuck from birth

Having a title

That title was “The Parodied Life of a Teenage Sock Puppet”

Because of course it was

Being a really helpful, wonderfully introspective way of working out my shit long before I had any idea I was helping myself out

Keep journals, kids. They may be embarrassing, but they’re also an amazing method of storytelling for your future self. And sometimes they manage to survive water line breaks against all odds, which is a marvel in and of itself.