The Note

I think this is kind of a funny story. I thought it would be nice to tell it for some comic relief in the stressful times we seem to be having lately.So, picture it, I'm sixteen. When I was sixteen I had a year long bout of acne that scarred my brain, not my face. I caused the acne by using harsh products to clean my face. I later learned my skin is so sensitive it would prefer bottled water if I could afford to wash my face with spring water every day.So I'm sixteen, it's around my birthday and I am suffering from teenage angst, adolescent problems. I don't remember why I was so upset, maybe it was the acne, perhaps the boy I liked didn't like me back. Maybe I was doing really bad in math, I was really bad at math. Anyways, I did something very weird.I wrote a note to myself.

It went something like this: "I hate Nina, she's such a fucking bitch, I can't fucking stand her," etc. etc. It went on with more foul language. So I write this note to myself, I guess it must have made me feel better. I was sixteen, forgive me. By the way, just as an aside. I know I used some dirty language in the note, but I didn't really use a lot of profanity at that age at all. I still don't know where that outburst came from. So I decide that I'm going to fold up the note and I randomly stuck it in a drawer in our wet bar near the kitchen. Fast forward to a few years later. My dad is making chai one morning and casually asks me, "Nina, do you have any enemies?""Enemies?" I thought about it for a second. "There was a girl in third grade who used to steal my stuff." I kind of laughed to myself."No, not then, now. You know, maybe someone you had a fight with.""A fight?" I asked. It was a weird question because I was a girl. I guess girls get into fights, but I only fought with my mom. "Why are you asking me this?""

Well, we found something..." he said and put some cinnamon in his tea."What was it?" I asked curiously, totally forgetting about the note I wrote myself."I cannot repeat it to you," my dad said."What do you mean you can't repeat it to me? Tell  me what it was!" It used some very bad language. "What had bad language?" I asked, again completely oblivious to the fact that I wrote this ridiculous note to myself."All I can say is that if someone is bothering you, you can tell us," my dad said while his chai boiled."No one is bothering me!" I kind of yelled. "You guys are crazy! I want to know what you are talking about! "No that is not possible," my dad said."What do you mean it's not possible?" I was kind of yelling."I cannot show it to you." He just stood there drinking his chai. I wanted to knock the white porcelain cup out of his hands."You guys are just crazy!" I yelled and went up to my room.I got really upset, I thought maybe someone did do something that was really mean and they knew instead of me. I thought maybe someone did hate me. I was doing something or another six months later. And it occurred to me, finally that I had written this vile note to myself a little while ago when I was suffering from adolescent angst. My parents assumed the note was from someone else. They didn't know how weird their daughter was, that she would write a wicked profane note to herself. They did not know that there was a time I truly did hate myself, or so I thought. What's the moral of this story? There is no moral to this story. Don't hide nasty notes to yourself in a wet bar drawer. Someone will find it.

This is just further evidence that I was always a bit of a weirdo. I don't think it's as weird that I wrote the note, or that I had negative feelings towards myself. The thing that gets me is that I put it in the drawer of a 'wet bar' that had no liquor in it by the way. We might as well call it a 'dry bar.' I put it in a place where anyone could have found it. Did I want someone to find it? I kind of actually don't think I did. I think I just forgot about the fact that I put it there. Why didn't I destroy it? Was I going to put it in my scrapbook? I didn't have a scrapbook, I wasn't one of those girls who kept mementos of her life. What kind of memento is a note to yourself that explains what a douche you think you are? Did my parents think someone else came into the house and put that note in the drawer for me to find? Did they think someone gave it me at school and I put it in that drawer? It was all a mess. Was I going to tell my parents that I wrote that note to myself? Hell no, that would have been scarier for them than if someone else had written it. It contained words I was not allowed to use. I didn't even know how my parents knew those words. I feel bad for them, imagine if you thought your kid got a note like that from a fellow student? Nowadays parents might contact the principal. That was back in the day when parents let kids solve their own problems. See, I was always a writer. I started my career by writing a cuss-filled note to myself at the age of sixteen. My writing has only become more self-conscious since then. Ha ha, it just makes me chuckle. The wet bar of all places.

nina