I found it tonight while looking in a box for something else: a scrap of paper which apparently never made its way into my 1984 journals. Coincidentally, I wrote it fifteen years ago, almost to the day. It fits my current state of mind startlingly well. Such timing:
9 October 1984:
Life never gets any easier, no matter what I may do or how I may change. It just brings different problems given different situations.
“Coming out” was not the catch-all and end-all I believed it to be during high school. The biggest change I see now, at age 20 and in my third year of college, is that I have no more idea where my life is going than I did in high school — perhaps even less. My dreams and my idealism (as well as my motivation to work for what I want) seem to have disappeared. What happened to all those things I was going to do? I hope they’re not gone forever.
I try to blame it all on a bad couple of months, but everyone has rough times. Those times, however, don’t cause them to lose sight of life. There’s something deeper involved. I don’t really know what’s wrong with me, and quite frankly it scares living hell out of me.
But I’ve got to go to class now. There’s not much I can do about it at the moment.
Self-analysis or self-pity? You be the judge. Either way, it hits pretty damned close to home for a 15-year-old piece of paper ripped out of a composition book…