Pandora's Aquarium: Old movies and teenage angst - Pandora's Aquarium

I watched an old movie tonight. Nobody could call it a particularly good movie. Puberty Blues, released 1981, based on a book published sometime earlier. Promoted as looking at the world of typical teenagers. For me both were enough to shape how I saw things and I hated myself because I didn't shape up.

I thought that that book was a blueprint. I have always looked for the way things are meant to be, how I am meant to be. I never trusted myself so I looked elsewhere. I still do in so many ways. I wish for someone to tell me how to do it, how to live, how to be a good person. How to be a person that will be liked and accepted. Because who I am...well, it just isn't enough.

I wanted so much to believe that the way it was in Puberty Blues was how I was supposed act. And when I couldn't I hated myself. I look back now in amazement that I wanted that sort of life. And I also see that in many ways I did have it, but as an adult. I believed that sex was something you had to give to be like by boys. I believed that if you didn't do what they wanted, what they saw as right then you were just nothing, worthless. What a fucked up way of looking at the world!

At 40 I can see that it was fucked. But I have a sister who did live that life. The perfect sister with the constant flow of boyfriends. And there was me, fat, smart, opinionated. I never shut up. I acted like I knew everything but felt like I knew nothing. Why is it that I still feel that I was the one who was fucked up.

I am sick of not knowing who I am and what I am supposed to do. I wish there was some sort of plan that I could follow. But there isn't and I am still wandering around, lost, scared and ultimately alone.