The movie was fun with Scott. We went out after and I ate six wonderful, delicious, mouth-watering, delectable, heavenly french fries. That was really living in itself! I don’t feel about Scott like I used to about Roger. I guess that was my one and only true love, but I’m glad it’s over. Imagine me in my first year of high school and barely fifteen and the one and only great love of my life is over. It seems kind of tragic in a way. Maybe someday when we’re both in college we’ll meet again. I hope so. I really do hope so. Last summer at Marion Hill’s slumber party someone brought in a Playboy magazine with a story in it about a girl sleeping with a boy for the first time and all I could think about was Roger. I don’t ever want to have sex with any other boy in the whole world ever… ever… I swear I’ll die a virgin if Roger and I don’t get together. I couldn’t stand to ever have any other boy even touch me. I’m not even sure about Roger. Maybe later when I’m older I’ll feel differently. Mother says that as girls get older, hormones invade our bloodstream making our sexual desires greater. I guess I’m just developing slowly. I’ve heard some pretty wild stories about some of the kids at school, but I’m not them, I’m me, and besides, sex seems so strange and so inconvenient, and so awkward.
I keep thinking about our teacher in gym teaching us modern dance and always saying that it will make our bodies strong and healthy for childbearing, then she harps and harps that everything must be graceful, graceful, graceful. I can hardly picture sex or having a baby as being graceful.
Gotta go. See ya.
Oh dear Diary, I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, but I’ve been so busy. Here we are preparing for Thanksgiving already and then Christmas. We sold our house last week to the Dulburrows and their seven kids. I do wish we could have sold it to someone with a smaller family. I hate to think of those six boys running up and down our beautiful front stairs with their dirty, sticky fingers on the walls and their dirty feet all over Mother’s white carpeting. You know, when I think about things like that. I suddenly don’t want to leave! I’m afraid! I’ve lived in this room all my fifteen years, all my 5.530 days. I’ve laughed and cried and moaned and muttered in this room. I’ve loved people and things and hated them. It’s been a big part of my life, of me. Will we ever be the same when we’re closed in by other walls? Will we think other thoughts and have different emotions? Oh, Mother, Daddy, maybe we’re making a mistake, maybe we’ll be leaving too much of ourselves behind!
Dear precious Diary, I am baptizing you with my tears. I know we have to leave and that one day I will even have to leave my father and mother’s home and go into a home of my own. But ever I will take you with me.
Dear Diary,
Sorry I didn’t talk with you on Thanksgiving. It was so nice, Grin and Gramps were here for two days and we talked about old times and lay around the living room. Daddy didn’t even go to his office the whole time. Grandma made taffy with us like she used to when we were little, and even Daddy pulled some. We all laughed a lot, and Alex got it in her hair and Gramps got his false teeth stuck together, and we were almost hysterical. They are sorry we are moving so far away from them and so are we. Home just won’t be the same without Gran and Gramps dropping in. I really hope Daddy is right in making the move.
Dear Diary,
Mama won’t let me diet anymore. Just between us, I don’t really know why it’s any of her business. It’s true I have had a cold for the last couple of weeks, but I know it’s not the diet that is causing it. How can she be so stupid and irrational? This morning I was having my usual half grapefruit for breakfast and she made me eat a slice of whole wheat bread and a scrambled egg and a piece of bacon. That’s probably at least 400 calories, maybe even five or six or seven hundred. I don’t know why she can’t let me live my own life. She doesn’t like it when I look like a cow, neither does anybody else, I don’t even like myself. I wonder if I could go stick my finger down my throat and throw up after every meal? She says I’m going to have to start eating dinner again too, and just when I’m getting down where I want to be and I’ve quit fighting the hunger pangs. Oh, parents are a problem! That’s one thing, Diary, you don’t have to worry about, only me. And I guess you’re not very lucky at that, because I’m certainly no bargain.
When I bought you, Diary, I was going to write religiously in you every day, but some days nothing worth writing happens and other days I’m too busy or too bored or too angry or too annoyed, or just too me to do anything I don’t have to do. I guess I’m a pretty lousy friend— even to you. Anyway I feel closer to you than I do to even Debbie and Marie and Sharon who are my very best friends. Even with them I’m not really me. I’m partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing. Sometimes I think we’re all trying to be shadows of each other, trying to buy the same records and everything even if we don’t like them. Kids are like robots, off an assembly line, and I don’t want to be a robot!
I just bought the most wonderful little single pearl pin for Mother’s Christmas present. It cost me nine dollars and fifty cents, but it’s worth it. It’s a cultured pearl which means it’s real and it looks like my Mom. Soft and shiny, but sturdy and dependable underneath so it won’t dribble all over the place. Oh I hope she likes it! I want so very much for her to like it and for her to like me! I still don’t know what I’ll get for Tim and Dad, but they’re easier to buy for. I’d like to get a nice gold pencil holder or something for Dad to put on his big new desk in his big new office so he’d think of me every time he looked at it, even in the middle of tremendously important conferences with all the leading brains of the world, but as usual I can’t afford a fraction of the things I want.
Lucy Martin is having a Christmas party, and I’m supposed to bring a gelatin salad. It sounds like a lot of fun. (At least I hope it will be.) I’ve made myself a new white soft wool dress. Mother helped me and it’s really beautiful. Someday I hope I can sew as well as she does. In fact someday I hope I can be like her. I wonder if when she was my age she worried about boys not liking her and girls being only her part-time friends. I wonder if boys were as oversexed in those days as they are now? It seems like when we girls talk about our dates that most of the boys are that way. None of my friends ever go all the way, but I guess a lot of the girls at school do. I wish I could talk to my mother about things like this because I don’t really believe a lot of the kids know what they’re talking about, at least I can’t believe all the stuff they tell me.
The party at the Martins was fun. Dick Hill brought me home. He had his father’s car and we drove all over town and looked at the lights and sang Christmas carols. It sounds kind of corny, but it really wasn’t. When we got home he kissed me goodnight, but that’s all. It kind of made me nervous because I don’t know if he doesn’t like me or just respects me or what? I guess I just can’t be secure no matter what happens. I sometimes wish I were going with someone then I’d always know I had a date and I’d have someone I could really talk to, but my parents don’t believe in that, and besides, confidentially, no one has ever been that interested in me. Sometimes I think no one ever will be. I really do like boys a lot, sometimes I think I like them too much, but I’m not very popular. I wish I were popular and beautiful and wealthy and talented. Wouldn’t it be nice to be like that?