Welcome to Excerpts From My Super-Secret Diary, a new A+ feature for Silver & Gold members in which we publish for you some of our incomplete and/or highly personal thoughts we’ve written down, usually with actual pens. Today, Maddie has selected excerpts from her journals chronicling her earliest queer days.
This week, I turn 25 and it’s the 10-year anniversary of the first time I came out as anything: when I told two of my friends on my 15th birthday that I was pretty sure I was “totally bisexual.”
My early teen years had their share of heavy angst. But that period was also one of the first times I found myself feeling really happy. Sometimes, in-between pining over girls that I couldn’t articulate my feelings for, and spending afternoons at the hospital with my mom, I got to just be an adolescent who did stupid shit with her friends and really loved Rent and the West Wing.
I compiled these journal excerpts because I find them hilarious and heartbreakingly earnest, but also because I have a lot of love for the person who wrote these things down. Reading through these old journals has viscerally transported me back to my high school bedroom where I wrote these words and then hid them under my mattress. I want to hug this version of me, and tell her that 10 years later, maybe she won’t have been John-Cusack-in-Say-Anything-ed (yet), but she’ll have a much better handle on this whole “being queer” situation, and that she’ll have had some incredible experiences of love and connection beyond what she would have ever imagined at 14 or 15. I also want to tell her that she gives 25-year-old me hope, because when I think of all the learning and growing that’s happened in the last 10-year period of my life, it makes me eager and open for what the next 10 will bring.
For now, here’s a window into my brain from eighth to tenth grade:
nothing like a good political slogan on a journal.
1.
May 8, 2005
I canNOT believe that my best friends are who they are. [Redacted] was shocked to learn that I know and — gasp — like gay people. She thinks that people didn’t used to be gay! What the hell?!? I liked my response to that, though: “They were gay, they just didn’t say so because they were afraid of being burned at the stake!”
But seriously, the worst part is that she would disassociate herself from someone who came out. That just blew me away.
I don’t especially want to be gay, but If I was, no big deal, and who knows?
It makes me want to cry that she would dessert me if I was a lesbian. It tears my heart out and rips it to shreds.
2.
May 12, 2005
Today, Mom and I were walking in Morristown. I was talking about what I’ll be doing in 20 years (when I’m 34). I wonder if I’ll be working in politics or journalism or writing. Maybe I’ll be a teacher. Maybe I’ll be a mom and a wife. Maybe I’ll be dead. Maybe we’ll all be dead. Maybe she’ll be dead.
3.
May 14, 2005
In my West Wing fan fic, Josh and Donna need to be together, as do Toby and Amy, CJ and Danny, and Charlie and Zoe. They really should have kept Aaron Sorkin until the end of Bartlet’s second term, when the show would have ended a success.
4.
May 15, 2005
I know I believe in evolution, and I’m definitely pro-choice and pro-gay rights.
I want equal rights for EVERYONE, including homosexuals.
5.
June 1, 2005
Empress of the World is the best book. I really relate to Nic. She’s confused about her sexuality, like I am.
6.
June 10, 2005
I had my first slow dance. With [redacted]. We were dancing to a fast song, and sort of talking, and then a slow song started. He said he was going outside, but I asked him to dance. He put his hands on my hips and I put mine on his shoulders and we swayed and moved around a bit. It was sort of awkward, but not really.
7.
July 17, 2005
According to V, who was here [at sleepaway camp] last year, “the food was OK, some of the guys were nice, some of the guys were dykes, none of the guys were hot.”
8.
October 2005
[This is from a page I typed on a typewriter, written as though I were speaking from the perspective of a new high school friend, who I was, incidentally, in love with]
“Maddie once said that she’s straight, but open. I have another name for that: denial.”
9.
November 17, 2005
[above this entry I’ve written, “DON’T READ, I can’t believe I wrote this down.” Sorry, past Maddie – I’m going to expose your secrets to all of A+ now.]
I don’t know exactly what you’d call these. Friend-crushes, maybe. But anyway. There are these people in the world who fascinate me. I think it’s because they’re who I want to be. I’m so shy around these people, and I become klutzy.
I can see myself reading this years ahead and burning it.
10.
February 17, 2006
I’m so fucking confused. I don’t know if what I feel is love or crush, or just friend-love that I’m not used to. Whatever it is, it’s not helping me figure out my sexuality.
I really don’t want to be a lesbian at school. It would complicate everything. I want to be visible in our class, but I don’t want it to be because I’m a lesbian; I want it because I can do good things for the school. (Doing good things can come out of being LGBT, but still.)
11.
March 29, 2006
I’m becoming more and more convinced I’m gay. I could be wrong.
12.
April 1, 2006
SHIT! WHY MUST LOVE BE SO COMPLICATED?
13.
April 17, 2006
So yeah, I told Q I’m attracted to her. I told her first and more blatantly than X [the other girl I am attracted to], but since then, I’ve felt really really drawn to X. When I saw X this morning, my heart flipped over. Fuck I’m confused.
14.
June 17, 2006
Q got up my shirt at Relay for Life which was REALLY nice.
15.
October 11, 2006
I want to be in love and have someone love me back. I want someone to stand outside my window with a radio over their head playing “In Your Eyes.”
16.
October 23, 2006
long list of things that happened at the homecoming dance
-Drunken lesbians with [redacted]!
continue long list of things that happened at the homecoming dance
17.
October 25, 2006
[four lines of text entirely blacked out and rendered completely indescernible by my scribbling over it in pen]
18.
January 1, 2007
In 2007, I want to not get depressed and be slightly less awkward and write more and play guitar more and manage to survive oboe and get a first kiss.
Oh my god, this reminds me so much of my old diary entries. Thank you for this! <3
But really, the excerpts about the confusion are SO real. I remember putting little rainbows in the corner of the page when I felt "gay" and then a rainbow with a cross through it when I felt "straight."
Also, using "cryptic clues" rather than actually just writing it, because I was too scared to put it down on paper, even just to myself!
I am so glad things changed!
OMG the rainbows and crosses. that is heartbreakingly adorable. our younger selves would have gotten along.
“They really should have kept Aaron Sorkin until the end of Bartlet’s second term, when the show would have ended a success.”
You were wise beyond your years, Maddie.
Though I just pretended the show ended when Sorkin left.
Also, I hope you at least kept 15yo you’s dreams alive and burned #9 after sharing it with the straddleverse.
Ah, thank you, I deeply approve of your pretending it ended when Sorkin left.
Also, though, I just want to set the record straight that I have no idea why my brain paired up Toby and Amy, and I feel like I must have meant Toby and Andy.
…….Amy can come date me.
Oh GOOD. I was going to ask about Toby and Amy. Yes, Andy makes much more sense. I will fight you for Amy Gardner though :P
I AM SO GLAD YOU CLEARED UP THE AMY SITUATION. I intentionally didn’t comment to avoid being super judgmental. :p Toby and Andy, yes. Amy and you, hell yes. I am sure her dog will also love you.
Oh Maddie, this right here:
“I don’t know exactly what you’d call these. Friend-crushes, maybe. But anyway. There are these people in the world who fascinate me. I think it’s because they’re who I want to be. I’m so shy around these people, and I become klutzy.”
I have never related to anything so hard in my life. I didn’t come to my own big gay realization until I was 20, so all through high school there were these older girls that I idolized. I wanted to BE them, but then I realized years later that I was also just hugely crushed out on all of them too.
omg yes they were all older girls.
Maddie,
I’m turning 27 next month and I also realized I was queer when I was 15. I didn’t write very much in a diary (I wrote in one very sporadically) but I did have a notebook that I wrote in with my best friend (we wrote letters to each other and passed it back and forth). We had pen names: she was Harley Quinn and I was Poison Ivy. It was through that notebook that we confessed our love for each other and I realized that I was totally queer.
Also, I’m glad you fulfilled your baby queer dream of being a writer.
OH that is perfect.
Confessing queer feelings in shared notebooks = OMG. I did this too with my complicated BFF with benefits-type person only we had each others’ livejournal passwords and wrote private messages there, which was also the most 2005 thing ever.
NUMBER EIGHT IS SO AMAZING
nothing like the manufactured nostalgia of a millennial-before-they-were-called-millennials to bring out some not-so-subtley suppressed desire.
I want to be in love and have someone love me back. I want someone to stand outside my window with a radio over their head playing “In Your Eyes.”
maddie lol
i mean it wouldn’t be not cute.
don’t mock my dreams, ok?
i mean like honestly way into it
I’m so envious of ppl capable of actually keeping diaries / journal
One entry in and I’m like “u know, Virginia Woolf was way better at this, but at a level that is almost self consciously literary like?? Who the Fuck puts in that much effort for something that is in theory meant to be private”
And then I stop writing entries, read articles about how ppl who keep journals are More Successful At Setting, Keeping And Reaching Goals, sigh, try again, stop again
Repeat
hahaha yeah i mean clearly the level of literary-ness is not exactly high here. but journaling is still real stuff even when it’s all caps raging about the elusiveness of love! :)
I’m really glad you put this on the internet, perfect human.
But these diary posts are so pure & raw and embarrassingly real
Also if u subtract the oboe and change “2007” to “2014-2016”, #18 could still apply to my current situation, which is sad
<3
did you survive oboe though
not really.
ugh I relate to all of this so much, I have all my diaries from age 9 to age 17 and I could have written (and did write) some of these very things. Oh friend-love!
Maddie this is amazing and adorable
oh man #2 punched me in the heart
and the rest of it just made me smile and think about little maddie with her west wing fan-fic!!
omg i know! that punched me in the heart when I found it, too! it’s one of the only mentions in my teen journals about my mom and my feelings re: her being sick. it’s amazing how much her being sick was just normal and/or not something i could deal with writing about.
This is so great Maddie – I love what you said about having a lot of love for your younger self who was writing these things. I was inspired to look back at my old journals from my early teenage years and it makes me both cringe and want to pat my 15 year old self on the head and say, “Just wait a few years.” At one point I was apparently questioning my sexuality based on a movie scene I was watching; I wrote down that I “might be partly lesbian” (whatever that means…clearly I did not know the word bisexual). I mostly just wrote about how I wanted to ~fall in love~ and find a boyfriend. “Maybe there will be cute guys when I get to high school” “Maybe there will be cute guys in the 10th grade” “Maybe there will be cute guys in college” NOPE but there will definitely be plenty of cute girls!
Also, I would totally love to hear what else happened at the homecoming dance. Sounds like a pretty eventful night, what with the drunken lesbians and all.
I love this so much. And I especially love how much love and compassion you have for past-you. I think that’s something we can all work on.
I love ALL of this SO much. And I’m really impressed at how insightful your younger self was. I swear I hadn’t come to most of these realizations until freshman or sophomore year of COLLEGE.
Did you survive oboe and get a first kiss? The suspense is killing me….
first kiss, yes! but oboe… i mean i lived to tell the tale but i didn’t play oboe after that year.
Oh, Maddie, i love this and i love you so much.
But Toby and Amy??? I’ve never even thought about that!
NO I swear I must have meant Toby and Andy. I will date Amy, if she is willing, TYVM.
Jajaja! That makes about a hundred billion times more sense!!! and yes, i’d definitely be in favor of you dating amy
SHIT YOU GUYS WHY MUST LOVE BE SO COMPLICATED!!
It’s a mystery forever, Viv.
This was so cute and sweet that I want to find my diary from when I was that age – however I fear it would be terribly embarrassing, and not at all adorable the way yours is
So 18 is me ! When I was 15 I was depressed, 8 years into my oboe lessons and still not into oboe and wanting to learn the cello, desperately wanting to be first-kissed.
Also, if I found my old journals and looked through them, I bet I would find tons of stuff about GIRLS and the feelings I had for them (my first slow dance was with a girl, in our bedroom, and it was wonderful and I was SO IN LOVE WITH HER but I didn’t recognize it as love until like 2 years ago when I came out).
Also I love how so many of us thought they were just a REALLY good LGBT ally before they realised they were queer. Like, feeling incredible JOY when someone you meet in real life comes out to you should be a pretty big fucking clue.
oh my gosh what percentage of [former] oboe players are queer? it seems like a lot.
well the last adorable person who landed on my couch through couchsurfing was a gay oboe player!
So that’s like 3 out of 3, but i’ll keep counting.
i know at least two others
paging @chlstevens
OMG another queer Chloe (former) oboe player ?!
AFFIRMATIVE. Do we need a “oboes and queerness” roundtable