I recently found out about Cringe, an event that takes place in a bar in Brooklyn every month. The inspiration came from the internet blogger Sarah B, who rediscovered her teenage journals. They were the usual adolescent outpourings, the kind that sensible people destroy, lose or, at the very least, keep well out of sight in the attic.
Sarah B thought she should share her angsty poetry and breast-beating prose. First she e-mailed the most painful extracts to friends each week. Having found it cathartic, she set up the Cringe night, for other people to bare their teenage souls. So that's what happens at Freddy's Bar & Backroom on the first Wednesday of every month. People stand up and relive the crushing humiliation of their adolescence in front of a crowd of strangers.
News of Cringe got me digging out my old suitcase of memories in solidarity. It's smelly and musty and full of photographs with curling corners. I decided to declutter. My memory case is now a mere paper bag, stuffed with what Sarah B might view as Cringe gold.
I was in the habit of writing letters as a teenager. Letters I never intended to send. Letters to people I was obsessed with. Letters to people I hated. Letters to me. It was funny, at first, looking back at the person I once was. A self-obsessed deadbeat with no fashion sense and a slight tendency towards stalking. No change there, then.
There are a few laughs, but mostly my memory bag contains rather a lot of sub-Morrissey-style wailing. In the Sinead O'Connor-inspired Everything Compares to Me, for example, I lament the fact that my friends, both girls and boys, have got more going for them than I will ever have.
"There's a prince. There's a star. I'm a nothing really. / He is small. She is wild. I do nothing freely. / I am green. She is pink. He is coloured orange. / Their throats are sore. I stop and think. Then I find a lozenge. / Why not me? Why have I got? Not one thing that's stunning? / She's got style. He's got taste. Soon I will be running. / But far away. I will still hear. And see the glitter, glitter. / I'm in such pain. I will remain. A pent-up Babysitter."
It gets worse. There are the melodramatic notes. The chirpiest melodramatic notes ever, in fairness, but that doesn't take away from the pain of remembering the place I was in when I wrote them. I even talk in the diary of "doing a Daddy", in reference to the fact that my father killed himself.
"I just see nothing for me . . . It's so DEPRESSING!!! . . . Nelson Mandela is getting out today . . . What is wrong with me? Why am I so ugly? Why amn't I really brilliant at something? Why is everyone else happy with themselves? Why do I feel this poxy way?"
It was around this time that I wrote a quasi-suicide note to yet another unrequited crush.
"Dear X
I don't know what your reaction would be when you heard of my death. I think I can assume you would be a little upset (I hope!). Anyway it's a pity this had to happen right now because I for one felt that we were getting on extremely well. That is about the only regret I have. Not getting a chance with you. Well, the longer I leave it the harder it will be.
All my love, Róisín xxx"
Surely parents everywhere should do a bit of self-inflicted cringing in a bid to help their teenagers get through the awful I-hate-myself-and-want-to-die phase that many of us go through - and some of us never get through. They should have a bit of a rummage in the attic to revisit their own adolescent angst. Kids need all the help they can get when they feel this way:
"Suddenly I am awake and once again sense the feeling of being beaten, all hope vanished into the small pit in my stomach that is churning sick . . . It's not wrong for me to always be wanting someone else's life. It's sensible because my life will never satisfy me . . . I am a nobody and nobodies are not needed in this world."
I can't help thinking that if I'd been given someone else's teenage turmoil to read - Adrian Mole doesn't count - it might not have taken me 10 years to see the lie in the following diary extract:
"I'm not looking forward to the rest of my life . . . I don't see any worth in me. I'm a waster, a loser . . . Good things happen but they don't touch me. I'm always conscious of others having a better time . . . I'm not happy . . . Someone save me."
Next stop, Brooklyn.
