Like It's 1999 E-Book

Giselle Renarde

• Herausgeber: Giselle Renarde
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

True confessions of a real-life high school student on the cusp of a new millennium. On the eve of the year 2000, high school student Giselle struggles with spirituality, ambiguous friendships, a family dealing with the aftermath of substance abuse, and deepening feelings of attraction toward her English teacher, a married man more than twice her age. Over the course of one school year, she shifts from seeing Lawrence as a father figure to falling obsessively in love. Is Giselle making a total fool of herself, or will her teacher return her affection?  Having an affair with a student would easily cost Lawrence his career, his wife, and his kids, not to mention his sanity.  Will a by-the-books teacher sacrifice everything to indulge Giselle’s teenage crush? LIKE IT’S 1999 is the actual, unabridged, honest-to-goodness diary of a teenager in love with her teacher.

Leseprobe

LIKE IT’S 1999: Diary of a Teenager in Love with a Teacher

© 2014 by Giselle Renarde

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Cover design © 2014 Giselle Renarde

First Edition 2014

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Introduction

LIKE IT’S 1999 | Diary of a Teenager | in Love with a Teacher | Giselle Renarde

Afterword

Introduction

LIKE IT’S 1999: Diary of a Teenager in love with a Teacher requires an introduction more than anything I’ve ever written.  Why?  Because unlike everything else I’ve written, this is NOT fiction. It is the actual, honest-to-god diary from when I was 18 years old.

In the summer of 1999, when this diary bursts into being, I was just heading into my fifth year at high school, called OAC—Ontario Academic Credits.  At that time Ontario’s school system required an extra year’s education if you were planning to attend university.  The OAC year doesn’t exist anymore, for those of you keeping score at home.  Everything changes.

I was an intelligent teenager, but also a bit hippie-dippy, as you’ll quickly discover.  As you’re reading these diary entries, feel free to laugh or shake your head or roll your eyes, or all of the above.  Trust me, I did, as I transcribed my hand-written journal.  Seems like I spent so much time being introspective that I’m not sure how I accomplished anything else.

And yet, for all my introspection, I’m actually incredibly dense. I can’t see the forest for the trees. You’ll likely learn more about me from the dreams interspersed throughout this book than from the diary entries themselves.  They work together to paint a more fleshed-out picture of who I was on the cusp of a new millennium.

If you start reading and think to yourself, “Ugh! I can’t stand this girl!” trust me, you are not alone.  That’s how I felt, reading this diary fifteen years after writing it.  Just hold tight and keep going. Soon enough you won’t be able to put it down.

When you can cast aside the New Age veneer, you’ll find beneath it a naïve, inexperienced young woman who is deeply infatuated with an English teacher. I started writing this journal in the summer of 1999, while waiting on a letter from this man, whom we’ll call Lawrence. He was away with his wife and family, visiting his in-laws. He’d already written me one dull letter, with promises of another.  I was so sure he’d profess his true emotions in that one.

Seems like forever ago that we actually put pen to paper to convey our thoughts, then sealed them in an envelope and pressed a stamp to the corner. Nothing was quite so instantaneous as it is now. We had to wait.

And that’s where this diary begins: me, waiting.

Reading back, I shake my head at how off-the-mark 18-year-old me was in interpreting my own life, not to mention my dreams. You’ll see what I mean when you read my take on the first one, about receiving a birthday card from Oprah.

If I could say anything to this younger version of Giselle, I’d tell her, “You are a silly and self-involved child, and you won’t realize it until you re-read these words in another 15 years.” I doubt if she’d believe me, though. She’d probably slam her door, cry on her bed, and then write a journal entry about it.

Just a note that names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike.

Okay, enough procrastinating. If this reads like a 60-year-old huckster imitating a teenaged girl, sadly it’s not.  These are unmodified journal entries, apart from the name changes. Even the punctuation is original—I would never use so many semi-colons now.

You start reading. Enjoy your time in my mind. See you on the flip side.

Giselle Renarde

Toronto, 2014

LIKE IT’S 1999

Diary of a Teenager

in Love with a Teacher

Giselle Renarde

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08/16/1999

A thought occurred to me today. It came in the form of a little voice that said, “Write it!”

Another voice—the clarifying voice—then asked, “Don’t you mean ‘Paint it’?”

Again, the first voice said, “Write it!”

At the time, I was thinking about a letter I have yet to receive, and one of my dreams started making more sense. This dream:

08/12/1999

Dream: Birthday Card from Oprah!

-This dream is about a birthday card from Oprah, hence the name.

-she and I are friends

-Oprah gives me a birthday card covered in blue writing

-I am delighted at receiving this card, but I don’t read it

-the card is in my hand and I think to myself, “I really wish I had read that card!” but I still don’t

-The blue writing, although printed directly on the card, is a personal message from Oprah

-her name is signed in black pen, along with a little message I also don’t read

I am now able to apply the Oprah Birthday Card dream to my life. You see, the reason I don’t read the card is not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have it yet.

Patiently (LIE!), I await my second missive from Lawrence. He’s away from the city, visiting his in-laws, but in the first (rather dull) letter he sent me he promised another was soon to follow. I have a strong sense that this second letter has already been written, and perhaps even sent, but because of the time restraints the world has placed on us I cannot yet read it. Now I sit with the anxiety of waiting for something that is sure to happen—and soon. But when?

In the dream, I know Oprah’s card exists because I’m holding it in my hand, but I can’t read it because it’s not really here yet. It will come... in time.

Beyond this place, there is no time. Time is something we must deal with because we are human. Without time, though, the wonderment of Earthly living would be decreased. With time, I can only guess as to how the story ends... or begins.