It took me a while to read all of this. I can see that the last entry was at the beginning of summer. It's already end of September, and I must say that my life has changed tremendously again. Starting with the choice of high school - before the results were announced, I started to question my school of choice. Some of my friends were talking bad about it and the overall opinions weren't great either. Eventually I've decided to transfer in the third round of admissions to a business profile in one of the top 3 high schools in my city. Everyone with some life ambitions would choose one of the three in the first place, yet I've decided to go an easy path with some mediocre school. I had to wait until the last week of summer break to find out if I was accepted. Summer holidays were passing fast. In the first week I went to a summer camp in Bulgaria—my dad decided to gift me the trip anyway, as I couldn't fly to Ireland this year. I had to decide quickly where do I want to go, so I just joined Sarah on her planned vacation. Besides, we've been planning to go to a camp together from about two years, so it could finally happen.
I guess I don't take well over 30-hour bus journeys. After 10 hours, I thought I was going to die, and thinking of how much longer I had to spend there was incredibly overwhelming. When we finally arrived, the hotel didn't impress me much. It looked like a block of flats with a pool, but at that moment, the only thing I cared about was a shower. We got settled in, had some time to freshen up and came down to the first gathering with the camp guardians. The manager welcomed us, read the rules, and the schedule for next gatherings. Everything was very routine: breakfast, pool, lunch, beach, dinner, city centre, and so on, every day the same. I will never forget the first trip to the city centre. Golden Sands can make quite an impression, especially in the evening. There is no quiet time here; the town comes alive at night. I won't even mention the ease of buying alcohol. A friend of mine - born in 2000 (13 years old) - would buy vodka every day without any trouble. So the drinking started from the first day of the camp. I was regretting that my roommates were not very fun, but I couldn't leave Sarah. Besides, I didn't know many people at the beginning. For the first few days, we spent time only in our company and didn't visit other rooms. I didn't like it, especially that during the meals everyone would sit at the big table, and only us would eat separately. So, I initiated going to the fun girls' room. Later, it turned into visiting the boys rooms. Things were going well until one party at a local club. It all started from Sarah liking one of the boys, who happened to like her back. In the club they ended up kissing and became the camp's couple. Sarah told him afterwards, that she wants them to be a couple until the end of the camp only. He didn't take it well. At first, he pretended that everything was fine, but later the tension between them arose. Sarah wouldn't leave the room, walked around with headphones on all the time, and didn't talk to anyone. At this point, I didn't really know how to act because I should have been there to comfort her, but on the other hand, I didn't want to ruin my trip, especially since I knew she made it all happen. Additionally, I've set a goal for myself to pull a boy named Josh, who was one of the fun girl's brother. So, I'd spend some time with Sarah and some time with the boys. For the time being, everything was going my way; I got to know Josh and we talked quite often. Meanwhile, Sarah made up with her guy by telling him she wouldn't leave him after the camp, which was a lie just to ease the tension. One night we went for a vodka with the boys; everyone got a little tipsy, and I achieved my goal. Unfortunately, Josh wasn't very good at kissing. He supposedly had many girlfriends. Eventually it turned out that he's two years younger, which meant he was going into 2th grade of junior high when I was going into 1st grade of high school. i.e. I was about to turn 16 this year and him 14. So, I had the fail of the year, and we wouldn't talk casually anymore. That's just how I am—when I drink a bit, I have a need for hitting on someone. However, despite few incidents, it was the best trip of my life, and I'm planning to go to a camp like this again next year. I wouldn't have any issues with Josh if he didn't called me a slut on his ask.fm after the trip.
In the second part of summer holidays, I went with to a local seaside city for a couple days with my parents. It turned out that Sarah was going there too with her family at the same time, so we would hang out and meet at the beach. Overall, we met a few boys there, but we got bored with them, so we decided to spend the rest of time in our company. From the beginning of the summer I smoked the most of cigarettes in my life. I could start counting packets. Going back to the moment where I said that I had to hide with smoking from Sarah, well, things have changed a bit. One day Sarah asked me if I want to smoke. Knowing of her attitude towards smoking, I thought it was a trick question and she wanted to expose me or something. It turned out she was serious and pulled chocolate-flavored Black Devil cigarettes out of her bag. From that moment on, I stopped seeing her as a mommy's girl, which I had thought of her most of the time.
We came back from the trip earlier to make it to the hip-hop festival in my city. Yes, let me explain. As you might have noticed when talking about summer, I didn't mention Stella once. Well, I can't explain what happened between us, but we just lost touch. She started hanging out with other girl from our middle school and we stopped talking. We made it to the end of the year, but once the summer started, we wouldn't meet or talk. I could have done something about it, reach out to her, but to be honest I was doing well without her. I felt more "free," I started doing what I wanted without thinking about what people will think of me. When I was friends with Stella, I lived believing that everyone is so childish, and it's time for them to grow up. But when we lost touch, I realized I was just 16 years old and, yes, I had to think about the future, but now I want to live in the present. I became closer friends with Hanna, and altogether, after camp and the time spent with newly met people, I can say I changed beyond recognition. I started listening to different music—rap. Living in a "metal" environment, it was unimaginable for me to start listening to it, yet it happened. It felt freeing not representing any subculture.
My third trip during this summer holidays was our family trip to Spain. We went to a small city on the coast. Me and my sisters weren't too excited at first. It seemed for us like a place for old people with nothing interesting to do. There's been some shows performed by animators every evening in our hotel. One time, we managed to meet some Belgian boys around our age. Thanks to it, our trip became much more interesting; we started seeing them every day. We also became friends with a dance and tennis instructor and his friend. The only upsetting thing for me was that Emily wanted to keep all the boys around her, and in the end, she succeeded. It was the last night in Spain for our Belgian friends. My mom was in an exceptionally bad mood. As a result, she didn't go to bed as usual but she was waiting for us to come back, to see if we're back on time. Since, as I mentioned, it was the last evening with the Belgians, we were 1.5 hours late. After the third text message from my mom, we all hurried back to the hotel. She had such an angry look on her face that the guys stayed in the back, and only the three of us approached her. We asked if we could say goodbye to our friends. Unfortunately, she said, or rather shouted, that we've had enough time and we can wave goodbye to them, despite the fact that we would never see them again. I had to mention this situation because it was one of the most upsetting moments of my life. After returning to our rooms, she didn't even let us remove our makeup.
We came back from Spain two days earlier than planned because the weather turned bad. I and my sisters didn't mind cutting the trip short since our friends have left. Additionally, we had to sort out matters related to my and Emily's school. During the trip, I've got a call from the high school that I changed to, infrorming that I've been accepted. I didn't expect to get in immediately because it wasn't easy at this point. It made me look forward to the start of the school year even more. I already knew few people who I'll be in class with and everythng seemed promising. At the first day of high school, I checked out my new friends but didn't notice any boys who stand out; well, there were still other classes to check. Only few days later someone have caught my eye and I've decided to get to know him better.
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Finding myself in this messed up world: a Millennial's diary
Non-FictionHi, I'm Rebecca and this is my story. Follow me through over a decade of life's twists and turns. Starting from an early childhood through growing up, navigating relationships, and finding purpose in the chaos of the modern world. This diary was bei...
