Anonymous 9

Age 23

2024: i am drunk on the back porch after everyone in the neighborhood has gone to bed. i am listening to "runaway" by del shannon in my wireless earbuds and dancing.

2023: i am high on acid alone in my room and reading disneywar by james b. stewart. it takes on an almost mythic quality and i want to explain it to someone, but there's no one there. i post a long thread about it on my locked twitter that no one seems to read.

2022: i am knocked down in a mosh pit and slice open my hand on a piece of a broken bottle, smashed on the basement floor by a british man whose name i never get. i wind up on the floor in a pool of blood that it takes me a moment to realize is mine.

2021: i have sex with my next door neighbor, a meth addict 25 years my senior. the sex is really bad but i don't tell him to stop because for some reason i can't make myself. afterwards i walk to the gas station and wait in the parking lot until it opens. i feel a strange cold sensation through my entire body.

2020: i am living in the basement of a friend's family after dropping out of college. they go to look at all the christmas lights in their neighborhood, and i walk with them. i have earbuds in and i am listening to "hell is real" by black dresses. i don't know why i came with. i don't want to be there.

2019: i try weed for the first time in a public park, with two new friends who live in my college dorm. we are caught by a police officer. he asks us what we're smoking and my friend starts describing the ingredients in his homemade thc vape juice. the cop lets us go with a warning and reports us to the university.

2018: i am in the psychiatric ward. i meet a girl who has been beaten badly by her father. she is still visibly injured and limping. the group therapy leader says that she cannot be released to the custody of her friend's parents. she has to either move to a longer-term facility or go home to her father. a teenage boy who usually only talks about the fallout games asks tearfully if she's going to be okay. the group leader tells him she doesn't know.

2017: i have tried to run away from home, and i am being returned to my parents by my friend's mother. i am trying not to cry. she lets me put whatever i want on the car stereo, and one of the songs i choose is chicago by sufjan stevens.

2016: i am at an against me! concert and i befriend a woman in her 20s named courtney. i am wearing a homemade chest binder and a wildly oversized flannel gifted to me by my ex-girlfriend. courtney buzzes around talking to other people at the show, and i meet adult trans people for the first time. during the concert, courtney takes off her shirt and drunkenly tries to rush the stage. she is kicked out of the venue.

2015: i am at an unschooling convention in a hotel in ohio. i have black eyeshadow smeared around my eyes. i am wearing big fake glasses, and a white tank top with a plaid skirt from forever 21. i am supposed to be wearing a sweater over the tank top but i've taken it off. i am hanging out with a group of other teenagers, and we rank each other by physical attractiveness. i am the third prettiest girl in the room.

2014: i am on a camping trip with my friend and our families. we are walking through a deep, muddy creek. i am enjoying the feeling of the cold water soaking my clothes in the hot weather. i talk excitedly about my little pony fanfiction. my brother has borrowed a pair of my sandals, and loses one when it gets sucked down into the mud.

2013: i am on a girl scout camping trip. my friend, my sister and i are listening to music on my sister's ipod touch. my friend is no longer homeschooled like i am, and is going to high school. she tells me about all of the new friends she's making, and how when i'm old enough i should apply for selective enrollment high school too. the song teen idle by marina and the diamonds comes on, and we skip it because we could get in trouble if a troop leader hears the lyrics.

2012: i am awake late at night, watching futurama on my sister's ipod touch. i am sitting in the bathroom with my clothes off after taking a shower. i am drinking a coke that i stole from the fridge in the basement. i get dressed and try to hide the can of coke under toilet paper in the bathroom wastebasket.

2011: i am reading about the fanfiction "rainbow factory" on the my little pony fan labor wiki. i get very upset thinking about it, and close the window. the cover image on the page is burned into my brain. it's just a picture of rainbow dash from my little pony with a determined expression. someone has drawn blood splatters on her face. i promise myself that rainbow dash would never really kill anybody.

2010: i am at summer camp, and i have an ongoing feud with an older girl named joslyn. we are playing dodgeball in the basement of the park recreation building. i nail her in the face with a dodgeball. i think she might have started crying but i'm not sure if i invented this.

2009: i am opening presents at my grandfather's christmas party. the stack of gifts is almost as tall as me. i get a barbie kitchen playset. when my family goes home that night, we find that our house has been extensively water damaged by pipes that have frozen, broken, and then thawed.

2008: i am at summer camp. all the campers are playing in the sand around the volleyball court. it is shady, and the sand is damp because it rained the day before. i am talking to a boy named jonathan about how i scraped my knee on easter, and bled through my tights. i tell him, trying to sound tough, that i didn't even cry.

2007: i am at disneyland with my family, riding the haunted mansion ride. i cover my eyes for most of it. i am scared by one of the ghost animatronics, and i cry.

2006: it's my fifth birthday, and my parents have shelled out for the pink poodle-themed birthday decoration that i saw in an oriental trading catalog. i like to read catalogs. i have dog ears on a headband, and my mom paints my face.

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