The Pink Shoe Diaries

I came across this website yesterday, beseeching people to send in snippets of their old journals and diaries: the more cringeworthy the better. Always willing to exploit my youth for a laugh, I turned to that which documents the cringiest of cringeworthy years in my life: My City Year Journal.

There are two things you need to know.
1) I took a year off before I went to college and did City Year in Boston. So while most 18 years olds were firmly ensconsed in a freshman dorm, I was living in my own apartment with a few other 18 year olds in the city, volunteering during the day in the Boston Public School System and spending my nights becoming acquainted with the city and with vodka.

2)Right before I went into City Year I broke up for good with my high school boyfriend, Ben. We continued to torment each other throughout next few years and it is insanely and hilariously documented in this journal, among with my other interactions with the opposite sex.

Now, when I was 18 and 19 years old I suffered from a condition known as Chronic Ridiculousness. I thought my love life was WAY more complicated than any other girl's had ever been or ever could be and I thought that everything in the world could be described as either "so cute" or "sooooo weird". This makes for some interesting journaling, believe you me.

Early morning walks of shame, late night phone calls, throwing my first "kegga" at which someone got stabbed, becoming a stalker, being stalked, my first ever drunk email, getting my tongue pierced, getting my first tattoo, breaking hearts, having my own heart broken

And those stories are interspersed with comments about volunteering in a second grade classroom/working as a teacher's aide.

The juxtaposition is poetic.

The fact is: my City Year journal is so epicly ridiculous in it's scope and content that a few Valentine's Days ago, at a sleepover with friends, I passed it around and let people read it cover to cover, occasionally pausing to read aloud the most dramatic of passages.

It's a page turner! And totally and emphatically cringe worthy. While searching last night for an appropriate passage to submit to the Cringe Book, I ended up reading the entire thing while engaging in a sustained, full body cringe.

Perhaps I will share a little insight into my 18 year old mind with you.



What better way to convey the "ironic" cuteness of having your ex boyfriend sing N Sync to you over the phone than by following it up with a Brandy quote?

It makes me think of all the 18 year old girls out their pouring their hearts into their livejournals. I know they must take themselves as utterly dead seriously as I once took myself. Do they know that in less than 10 years they will read what they wrote and cringe so hard they give themselves a cramp?

Then again maybe when I am 36 I will do the same thing with this blog.