Tonight I picked up the very last of the boxes of stuff my ex-mil has been storing for me. There is a huge box filled with my old journals. I picked one at random to read. It covers 3/9/96 thru 12/21/96, which was the end of my junior year thru first semester of senior year of high school. It reads much like a bad teen romance novel. OMG I like this guy. No wait now I like this other guy. Oh shit I’m in love with some other guy and if he doesn’t love me back I’ll simply die. You get the idea. 

Anyway, on the inside of the back cover I had written the following:

She smiles through a thousand tears, and harbors adolescent fears. She dreams of all that she can never be. She wades in insecurity, and hides herself inside of me.

It made me gasp, but I didn’t immediately recognize it. I had to Google it, and found out it is a verse from a song by Mariah Carey called Looking In.

It’s funny how I still identify with the lyrics at 36 just as much as I did at 17.