“I Just Wanna Feel Something”- My First Diary Entries
Recently, my mother had uncovered some of what was my first ever diary entries that I wrote in middle school. I was deemed undesirable by my peers and I was just trying to survive.
The thing that made my mother upset is that she didn’t realize that her daughter was hurting and felt this way. My mother sent me a few of the diary entries, which were not written in notebooks, due to contrary belief, but they were written on normal lined paper. The pictures are too small, so she texted them out to me. The first one was written in May of 2004. I was 12 years old. This was when instagram and social media didn’t exist.
At the end of sixth grade, there was this end of the year party, and I was not included, and of course, my mother, being the mother she was, didn’t listen when I told her I wasn’t invited and it was not to be messed with. She said, “There must have been a mistake!” She called the kid’s parents. She asked if there had been a mistake in why I didn’t get an invitation. The mother of the child told her that it wasn’t a mistake, that I was not included. When my mother inquired why, the mother said ,” YOUR KID IS A FREAK!”
I was listening to this on the other line in the kitchen. My heart dropped. I had been called a freak all my life and this was just solidfying it.
I heard my mother cry after she hung up the phone. I went up to my room, shut the door, grabbed paper and I wrote this:
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. I am a freak. Those parents hate me and I’ve done nothing to this kid. I’m hated for just existing. I am just trying to breathe. I can’t speak, I can’t talk to others, I can’t even say what I want to say.
Shhh. Keep your head down, keep your voice quiet, you can’t speak your mind, or say what you believe, people will look at you funny. I Just want to feel something. Something. God, if you’re real, then f*cking help me.”
I was 12 when I wrote that. A 12 year-old who had no friends, who tried to fit in and tried to be her own.
I wrote a diary entry in 2005, I was 13 years old. I had just moved back to the States and I was having a difficult time fitting in.
“Jewish, Christian, what am I? What do I really believe? God’s words are being taken out of context? What do I believe? How do I feel?” I wrote in an essay about what I believed. I am half-Jewish and my grandpa always told me it’s up for me to decide what I believed in.
I wrote on March 30, 2005:
“I don’t know what to believe. I have always felt in touch with my Jewish side, but my mother loves Christmas. I am trying to figure out who I am supposed to be. One thing I hate, is when people say ‘Be Yourself!’ Whenever I am, they strike me down. ‘Oh, no that’s not what to do!’ ‘That’s not what to say!’ Stop! God what is wrong with you? I am not even home. I don’t feel home. I don’t feel like it’s real? Am I even real? Am I alive? Or is this Anne’s (Frank) joke of me being half of what she was? I keep seeing her in my thoughts, and I hope she’s ok. God, what the hell am I doing? I am trying to find out who I even want to be? Jewish or not? Where am I going with my life? I am so tired of being the freak in the group or even in the school. Heartbreak, no guy will ever touch me, while other girls are getting their first kisses, and their first caresses, and I am the scaly one, who is the reject on the other side of the room. I don’t even know how to do my hair up nicely. I don’t wear makeup, should I? People say I’m pretty, at least that’s what my mom says, I’m UGLY. I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirrior! I hate my looks, I want to be pretty like some of the actresses I love, I am ugly. How can I be an actress with this face? I’m talented, says the choir teacher, but am I really good enough for anything? I want to be a shining star. I’m the Jew that will blow these people away. Am I even a Jew? I don’t even have a Mitzvah or a way to read the Torah. I wasn’t raised this way. I feel more of a Jewish woman than ever before. I should be having my Bat Mitzvah by now, but we cannot do that now.
I feel like I could have a boyfriend that could touch me innocently, but I can’t- I don’t think I’m meant to be happy. I watched Durbin again today, but I am still wondering how she’s doing. Hope she’s well. To me girls like me don’t get the guy, don’t get the invite to the parties, or don’t get the right to even exist. I am an animal that people want to throw away.
To me, my own feelings mean nothing. Keeping myself quiet, but they can’t contain me! I’ll want to scream loud and be heard. One day, I will.”
When I was young, I just wanted to be heard, and loved. I guess, not knowing I was autistic then, really put a damper on things. I don’t think doctors had a way to test for it. Autism, as for me, I suffered in silence. I really wanted to have some kind of feeling, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to achieve any of it.
I still write in diaries, this time in actual notebooks and I just want to have them, for as long as I can have them .
Soon, in the summer, I’ll be using my diary entires as a way to showcase Autism in a new short “Kate is a Friend of Mine”- told through my diary entries and my friends who are willing to be filmed, but of course more on that later!
Diaries are so important to me and the fact that I am a diarist says more about me than anything else.
