Welcome to Excerpts From My Super-Secret Diary, a new A+ feature for Silver & Gold members in which we publish for you the incomplete and/or highly personal thoughts we’ve written on paper with actual pens.
Today Riese has plucked some lines from a stack of diaries spanning the years 2008 – 2014 and is presenting them here, for you. These are not in chronological order! If you think I’m talking about you, don’t worry, it’s somebody else. xoxo gossip girl
1.
Why do I do it. Why, when nothing but temporary thrills will come of it. Because I am an animal? Because we are all animals. Because I want to feel things. Because I am a body.
2.
When he told me he didn’t “get” why I’d ever want to “be intimate” with a woman, he essentially put a stopwatch on the coffee table between us. It went off a few weeks later and I stopped taking Wellbutrin and started drinking more and went out into the night to find girls because I was in New York City and I could be anyone.
3.
This is me on an airplane descending into Oakland. I feel confused that my life is happening, going on like this, in this way. I feel that I have no idea what will happen next. Does anyone else on this plane understand this or feel this way.
4.
I think I drink and smoke alone too much. I wonder if the internet makes people drink alone more, ’cause you’re never really drinking alone. I think I need to become a better person for 2011. Like I should stop drinking and smoking alone, for starters.
5.
This is my company, this is my business, this is my brand. I am in control and I call the shots and I need to remember that. This is how I take MY LIFE back. I say no to her. I say “if you want to walk away, we will find a way to return what you put in.” You helped get us where we are now, but I can’t want it anymore. I have to be sure of this. It’s radical but I think I’m right. WE HAVE TO TRUST OUR INSTINCTS.
6.
Places that I go that are holy to me:
– The library
– The bookstore (treated as library)
– The Waverly Restaurant
– hotel rooms
– Green Lake at Interlochen
– (I used to have Columbia, but now it aches)
7.
It’s happening in a few days. Camp. This thing we’ve talked about and thought about for so long is here. I don’t even know what to expect because this has never been done before. This is the first time. I hope everybody likes me and that I like them. It has to work, right?
8.
I needed to tell stories! Being in them seemed like the easiest way to do that.
9.
She’s SO CUTE. She can write and draw and grow things and maybe this is me going back to my roots to someone who reminds me of where I came from but maybe this is me being a bird with another bird going into the future.
10.
I have a habit of wanting to predict things. I haven’t always been this way, only after the trifecta: divorce, death, mom coming out. Then you grow up, you get cheated on a few times, unexpectedly fired, kicked out of your apartment, maybe more than once. So I try to control my life by assuring myself that I always knew what was coming at the time! I just didn’t want to admit it to myself! But that’s what LIFE actually is — surprises! I can’t be prepared. I’ll always be unprepared. I wasn’t lying to myself back then, I was simply in the dark, as humans so often are. Making myself miserable now worrying about a diminished view of the future won’t make that future any more predictable. At least I can be happy in the meantime.
11.
Anxiety is a part of life. I cannot stop bad things happening by predicting them.
12.
There’s no gym, I’m gonna go broke refilling my medications, I have no income source on the horizon, and nothing promising in the works for anyone ever. But I don’t care because I have her, and every day I can see the sun rise and set so close to the ocean and I can pretend like my life is better than it actually is.
13.
She’s growing tired of me. I don’t think we even like to do the same things. I feel so sad and stressed and mad and alone, like I just want to go home and lie on my Mom’s couch until I die.
14.
Maybe that’s what we had in common, our mutual belief that I needed help.
15.
Dear interns: you are my heart’s hood. I wish I had more time to know you, but I also know that knowing people is where we start getting into trouble. All friendships eventually turn cranky, and we’re still safe. That night in August when we got high and wrote a story together reminded me of why we bother existing at all. It was nice to just be me. I wasn’t anyone’s business partner or girlfriend or roommate or co-worker. It was nice to be with people who understand what I’m talking about because to be honest most of the people in my life rarely do. It was nice to be with young people who don’t know yet how little the rest of the world will care about poetry. That adulthood is a bargain.
16.
I guess I can just keep taking Xanax until I forget. I just don’t like feeling that something changed, and maybe that something was me.
17.
I cried when the bill passed in New York. Unexpectedly — tears just appeared like someone waiting for their cue. Send in the clowns. But on Thursday it was all still just an idea. We went to the Revel & Riot party. They make t-shirts and they look really good. Marni told me afterwards that Aja said I was fun. Me! Fun! Tegan and Sara Quin were walking around in the crowd. They kept catching my eye — not because they’re Tegan and Sara but because they are exquisitely constructed human beings. They’re beautiful, like they’ve never had a pimple or a sunburn or fallen down drunk and woken up with a bruise. But they write the songs we listen to after our bruises and sunburns!
18.
I think it’s about daring to do something. You just have to be unsafe, do something other people don’t think they would do. You sort of pressure people into thinking we deserve it. You act as if. As if we are pirates. This has to be honest. We need to not lie or be afraid. Gotta shine on like bright queer candles, raging raging raging.
19.
So it’s all been a lie, and I feel stupid again. For the first time since meeting her, I want to fuck her. Like as soon as someone fucks me over I need to open them up, like last night in the car I thought, I could do this how. I could swallow you whole. I could crawl inside you and never leave you and what then, what would I see inside you that I can’t see from here.
20.
When nobody’s knocking down my door, I have trouble opening it.
21.
When did we become so crabby? When did I start feeling so gross all the time? Why do people keep asking me for a plan. I have no plan. I have no plan. How many times do I have to tell you that I have no plan.
22.
It’s funny to just get it wrong over and over — love. I think I held on so tight because I was banking on it. I was auditioning for the role of “wife,” but I just kept getting callback after callback, and that spot on the wall where the cast list belongs, well it never went up. I could’ve asked about it but I didn’t, because I knew that asking would get an answer and that answer would be the end of me ever thinking it’d be anything but Our Town all over again. Of course I’m not Emily. Who would ever pick me to be Emily. Look at my bangs!
23.
I have one foot in this world — this new world, where everything is about my writing and my friends and t-shirts with colors like flowers and the idea of moving to California. Then there’s the root of me — drunk or stoned and alone in this dirty city I love, wondering what happened to me or when I’ll get the motivation to clean up my act. Then behind that is something worse, and old, like ghosts. I give myself a lot of room to fuck my life up and not feel guilty about it. A response, I’m sure, to remembering all the anxiety I used to have about drinking and sleeping enough hours and being skinny and accomplishing everything. I miss myself, I miss who I was before I picked up these habits, that aiming for it.
24.
She says that when she goes out of town it’s like she stops existing. It wasn’t always like this, though, not at the start. I don’t know how else to live. It’s true, I sometimes have to force myself to think of other people when I’m alone. I just really enjoy my own company! This is why everybody cheats on me. Isn’t it.
25.
I could never love a man again. But I could jerk him off, take his money, and spend it on Alex?
26.
If Autostraddle fails, I will submit to the machine.
27.
It feels this way every time — behind the curtain, she turns out to not be a wizard after all. Who are these women who come into my life and eat my brain, flip my eyeballs around, tell me dinner is on its way. They offer me what religion offers people, really: a chance to fix all my problems, a solution to what ails me. These women choose their roles and have a certain way about them. They will “make everything okay.” They have everything “on lock.” They will “take care of it.” But they can’t, really, can they? I mean, some people can barely even take care of themselves. This is the clearing I can walk through, if I want to. I can be my own wizard.
28.
I’m going to start a magazine and ideally I will then change the world. I need to go to the doctor and either be okay or get sent away. I hide so much from everyone. Oddly enough, the only thing I’m sure of is that I can change the world. That’s all I actually believe in, that’s the only thing I don’t doubt.
29.
I’m just worried if I take my life into my own hands, I could break it, or else discover that it is weightless, and has no meaning.
30.
I feel so PEACEFUL that I will be paying everybody, like I can sleep at night, even though the stress of making the money to do that isn’t peaceful at all. It’s better, this is better than before, I hated having it be so unfair. It’s emotionally exhausting, you feel so indebted to people, and so our solution was to avoid making anybody WORK for us, we stuck to activities that were fun to participate in. But still. I don’t understand these CEOs who can pay their writers, but don’t. Or pay themselves millions every year while paying their editors $25k. All I want is to pay more people more money to do more and better things. How do they sleep at night?
31.
I’m not dead yet so I have to start living soon and see who I meet along the way. Instead of continuing to save up for a dream only one of us is having.
32.
I think my goal in life might be “Revenge of the Nerds.”
33.
Welp, Abby’s it. It’s an unexpected twist but this little wing splits me right open and I should care about how young she is but I don’t. Because she wakes me right up. Thinking about this weekend — that’s what falling in love can feel like when you’re ready for it. It can feel safe and enormous instead of scary and confusing — not that scary or confusing love always ends, it’s just a different route. This kind of love is less like falling and more like love is also catching you in return. The ferris wheel kept going and going like it’d never stop, and we don’t have to, either.
34.
The day I got hit by a car was still a really beautiful day, is what I mean.
I’m crying reading your diary? Like how fucking phenomenal are you as a writer and a human that I am crying reading your diary?
“I can be my own wizard.”
You know, this lovely thing you did is making me think maybe I don’t have A Lot Of Feelings so much after all. Maybe everything is manageable and fine. Maybe that.
Holy damn. I love this series and thank you for sharing these.
also I applied for a job at Olive Garden today and totally thought of you
i hope you get the job and think of me every time you refill somebody’s basket of breadsticks
This is really amazing, and makes me super-extra glad that Autostraddle exists and you haven’t had to submit to the machine.
“Why do people keep asking me for a plan. I have no plan. I have no plan. How many times do I have to tell you that I have no plan.”
relate relate relate.
i want you to know that i said that in 2010 AND LOOK AT ME NOW
i am 50% sure about what i’m having for breakfast tomorrow.
Wow. Thank you for sharing. This was beautiful.
I relate to so much of this, but I wanted to say that:
“Oddly enough, the only thing I’m sure of is that I can change the world. ”
I can guarantee that Autostraddle changed the world for this small town queer person. I have lurked for awhile now. I finally came out to basically everybody over the past year, after getting married and divorced from a guy, and I spent 27 years on this planet waiting to come to a website like this and read all these things and know that I can be. Just be. Me.
thank you, kate!
Chiming in to say that unequivocally, Riese has changed the world <3
Hear, hear.
I came into this article feeling grouchy and I’m leaving feeling relaxed & uplifted. Thanks for this.
Also, m’lady’s name is Abby & 33 gave me goosebumps.
Nope, not crying. nope.
“This kind of love is less like falling and more like love is also catching you in return.”
just fucking kidding i’m sobbing over here.
welp i wanna hug you
Waverly Restaurant. I’ve had many feelings in that diner.
i used to go there for breakfast at least once a week and i would sit in one of the tables that’s just for two people that’s really for one person once there’s food on it and read things and read things and i knew the servers and i miss it a lot
Well this is for sure my new favourite thing on AS.
You can change the world, you already are.
It was comforting to read something with dark and light. Not enough people share their darkness, which marks the darkness very isolating. So thank you for being so honest and authentic, for sharing so much of yourself.
thank you! i think i’m always dark or light. i feel like there must be something in between but i’m not sure what it could be
“Gotta shine on like bright queer candles, raging raging raging.”
!!!
I think I found the next Riese quote I am going to make it something pretty
Which means this needs to be on a poster and/or t shirt. Also I love this thank you for sharing Riese!!
YES YES YES
I was thinking it needs to go in a runagayhearts zine.
A RUNAGAYHEARTS ZINE
CAMP IS SO SOON
“Oddly enough, the only thing I’m sure of is that I can change the world. That’s all I actually believe in, that’s the only thing I don’t doubt.”
Love this SO much. I think you accomplished it <3
that is very kind thank you dawn! <3
It amazes me how much we can all relate to each other’s pain & struggles. For some of these it’s like SERIOUSLY, are you in my brain/heart??
Thank you for sharing <3
i think the great laneia once said ‘if you are [thing], somebody else out there is also [thing]” but i don’t remember where she said it or i’d find the exact quote and give it to ya
You have the coolest brain.
“maybe this is me being a bird with another bird going into the future”
Thanks for making this whole weird universe!!!!!
thanks for being a cool bird!
“I needed to tell stories! Being in them seemed like the easiest way to do that.”
Well there’s an arrangement of words that if they had been arranged otherwise I wouldn’t have felt an honest thing I needed to hear at all.
Thank you for inviting us to your brain. You have definitely changed the world alone through the way your words resonate.
thank you for helping me make that world <3
The stuff our dreams are made of, seeing Riese as Riese. Sweet lesbian Jesus you write so beautifully and thank you for letting us be right here with all of autostraddle.
#blessed
hi bird
BIRD!
awwww….love birds
I am glad that I am so over feeling weird about people inside-outing their guts on the internet, which has allowed me to revel in reading this (and Laneia’s last time) with relish.
Also, can we talk about #9: “She can write and draw and grow things”
People frequently talk about differences in relationships, like May-December stuff, but what about relationships that cross the urban-rural divide? Even though I am relatively practical myself, I think there is something amazing about the kind of nature-practicality common among people raised in the country and I don’t know if this is because I’m an urbanite and/or something to do with socialisation and images of hot Land Girls.
Like, my wifepersonwarriorprincess can point at plants and know the names of them and I find this magical and v attractive. Is this a shared phenomenon?
WELL, my dad’s family were all farmers and that’s how he grew up and my grandparents still had the farm ’til i was nine or ten, so even though i’m technically urban, i spent a lot of time in rural farming areas, at county fairs, wishing they had 4-h in ann arbor. but also, i’m a vampire who lives in a cave. so i feel like maybe for us, that’s the divide that really gets our goat festivals.
that being said, I LOVE THE PLANT MAGIC! i mean i just eat that shit RIGHT up. but i am bad at trees and nature in general. i just find the indoors very temperate, you know? and there are less bugs.
Riese, what a brave, intelligent,sensitive and creative woman you are. Thank you for your honesty and openness in sharing your thoughts and feelings here. That certainly takes some courage. The example that you offer to the rest of us is confidence building and enabling. The monumental work that you started with the inception of AS is so far reaching,in both its scope and impact,as to be immeasurable. I know that it is appreciated by women like us throughout the world. You are special, to both our community and to us as individuals. Thank you again for sharing your inner world with us.
thank you diane!! this is so sweet.
Thank you.
This feeling: “This kind of love is less like falling and more like love is also catching you in return.” is everything. It’s calm and home and euphoria and disbelief and comfort and wild. When I had this feeling the first time it changed my life! I feel so lucky to have it over and over again (for me, with the same person, though I’m sure I’d feel just as lucky if I had it with others too… and in friendships I sometimes do too)
ISN’T IT THE GREATEST THING
‘Adulthood is a bargain’
Honestly, I needed this wisdom for my current season.
I’m just going to cradle it very gently near my heart and try not to crush it with all of these conflicting emotions I’m having.
this is like the e.e cummings poem but with a cradling instead of carrying
Thanks for this Riese. Also:
“Oddly enough, the only thing I’m sure of is that I can change the world. ” You are and you will!
bless you
I’m late but I love this and I’m trying not to cry at work now? I just love reading other people’s diaries, diary comics, everything. #personalemotionalvoyeur
Late to the party, but yeah, I was crying by the end of this. You’re an extraordinary person, Riese. Here’s to the hope that none of us will have to submit to the machine.
I never journal, but after reading this, I’m gonna start. Thank you for sharing, you rock.
So many feelings about this post. <3 Yes.