parlaying angst into fame

Back in February I submitted some old high school-era poems and journal entries to The Cringe Book, which will be published next year by Crown Publishing. I picked the worst of the worst: words laced with overwrought, morose, angsty, vaguely humiliating histrionics. Yesterday I received an email from the editor telling me that two of my journal entries have been accepted for publication and will appear in Melodrama section of the book. Awesome!

(And I know I shouldn’t laugh at myself, because, melodramatics aside, I really was critically, dangerously depressed, and that is a very serious issue. However...I just can’t help but chuckle at how maudlin I was about the whole thing!)

Anyway, the editor wanted me to write a few lines about the entries—basically my adult perspective on the entries I churned out as a teen. This is what I submitted to her:

Re: the June 20, 1989, entry:
Anne Frank inspired me to name all my journals, which is why this entry is addressed to a person. Because, after all, the petulant woes of a middle-class American teen are so similar to those of a Jewish girl forced into years of terrifying, rat-like hiding by a genocidal regime.

I was 15 when I wrote this entry; I thought I was terribly “deep” and had an “old soul” because I half-heartedly worried about the plight of Romanians and Ethiopians. But not enough to actually, like, donate my allowance to them, mind you.

Re: the February 14, 1991, entry:

Well, Happy Valentine’s Day 1991 to me! This entry perfectly illustrates an equation that even a math idiot like myself can understand: severe clinical depression + 16-year-old angst + self-absorption = overwrought histrionics.

I love how trivial things like quiz bowl and my high school musical rehearsals (as compared to, say, the Gulf War, which took place one month earlier) were the last straw—the catalyst for me crawling beneath my bed, weeping to the sounds of a Puccini tape, and renouncing at all. Motherfucking Mame sent me into a depressive tailspin. I love it.


song heard most recently before posting:
Sad Lisa—Cat Stevens