Sweet Seventeen

Yesterday, I turned 17!! That's so wild considering that when How Fitting was founded, I was at the ripe age of 13 with no actual sense of self (not that I fully have one now, it's improvement.). It really just is amazing how oddly different and similar I am from the seventh grade version of myself imprinted on the Internet. Forever. Ugh.

Seventeen is a rather odd and awkward age to turn. First off, there's so much in between. It feels like I've been in between forever. In the words of Francine Pascal, "I am seventeen. The good things about seventeen is that you’re not sixteen. Sixteen goes with the word sweet, and I am so far from sweet." and I take some sort of connection with that- a lot of being seventeen is no longer being sixteen. I'm on the cusp of legal adulthood and I'm nervous and excited and happy to just kind of hang back and be seventeen and not sixteen and do adult things such as driving a car (horrible at it. terrible. never good idea.) yet fully shying away from anything with unappealing responsibility. 

Along with this is the copious amounts of media surrounding the age of seventeen. I mean if we want to bring it back to my infamous emo days, there's an All Time Low song that says, "stay seventeen" and for some reason I was like "god I really can't wait to be seventeen because of this shitty song"- with magazines titles and lines from Abba songs, seventeen seemed like some sort of club to thirteen year old Ann. Television and music and film and photography made sixteen a rather pressured year for me to constantly have fun and be spontaneous and "be sixteen" be sixteen. be sixteen. And I don't want to feel constantly like I'm wasting some "precious" year (I'll honestly forget in twenty years) whenever I'm not be cinematically worthy. That's a boring and exhausting way to live. 

I sobbed the night before my birthday. I was organizing my DVD collection and fantasizing over what I'm spending my first paycheck on (as in a JOB. I have a job that PAYS. How crazy is that??) and something stupid triggered it like my phone charger breaking or not being able to find the lens cap to one of my cameras and I just broke down. I love birthdays. I hate my birthday. Similar to my feeling of pressure to have a grand ol' time at sixteen years old, I always feel like my birthday has to be some sort of magical, wonderful, day and I hate that. I hate expectations. Along with this was the actual fear of aging. It feels like I've fast forwarded through everything and now here I am and I don't really know what to do with that. 

The actual daytime piece of my birthday was quite plain and simple and average. It was Kol Nidrei (eve of Yom Kippur) that night and so my parents (who were observing the holiday) did not go out to dinner with me, which I was quite emo over at first but in the end, there was really no point in getting upset over trivial things like this. I shot a couple of photos of my grand entrance into the Great Seventeen Club (aka photographic masturbation) on my stuffed animal covered bed. I ended up being quite typical and watching The Naked Brothers Band Movie on the tv I stole off the side of the road that one time   as I do for every other milestone of my life. 

me holding up one of Ben's gifts

Actual night of the big one seven: I cried. Multiple times. I ended up going out for burritos with Anh and Ben and sitting in the park dipping chips into rice and beans and reading through mixtape playlists and eating sponge cake and being upstairs in my bedroom playing guitar and hanging upside down off my bed. All very surreal.

bedroom scene 

Overall, I'm not sure where I'm at with birthdays. I guess I've reconciled the birthday curse and understand the lack of perfection within them and the triviality of it all. In the use of a cliche, overused, Bradbury quote, "I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane." I hope to take this year to become less impulsive, twitchy, and restless and all the more. 

sweet 17: gifts

I've got them bad boy blues baby

Ugh wow quite a lot has happened. I feel as though that will continue to be a common opening sentence. I need to write more one here. 

♥I saw The Front Bottoms!! It was hands down one of the best nights ever my god. Seeing my favorite band ever couldn't actually be any better- I was pressed right up against the barricade, Brian Sella nodded at me multiple times, and I ended up crowd surfing for the first time ever to my favorite song off Back On Top, "Plastic Flowers". They're incredible live like Brian is adorable and so fun and they sound just like they do (if not better) in recordings. God damn I'm kind of tearing up thinking about it. 

Elvis Depressedly also opened which was A+++ 

I actually ended up seeing in them in Upstate New York funny enough (my friend's grandmother lives there) and my god is it gorgeous there. 

your local nature loving gay boi 

♥I became a staff member of Ando! Everyone there is super duper sweet and we just published our November issue! If you want to hear about me sitting in an empty apartment with two of my lovely friends, I'd highly recommend it (also watch out for my cool picks on music this month because I'm a cool music kid)

♥So this has become a How Fitting tradition on any of these diary posts but here is the CRUSH CORNER!! 

♥Brian Sella: my god does this one need an explanation?? He's just so adorable and sweet and I love focusing on him and The Front Bottoms.

♥Drake: Not even current Drake but like young actor wheelchair Drake. I've been watching quite a lot of Degrassi lately.

♥Banks: All I've been listening to. Her voice is beautiful and the lyrics are SO fucking good- 10/10 would recommend.

♥Matthew Gray Gubler: When is he not on my crush list? With Halloween being a thing at the moment, he's even more important.

♥Evan Peters: Yet another Halloween one but he's always up there.

♥Buffy: Not even Sarah Michelle. Buffy. 

Have a $uper cool Halloween,

Sunday Diary: 14 Is An Unimportant Age To Turn

Vivi and I walk from her house to the small town by her old middle school. I laugh at the rumor of her taking drugs that is going around at her school. Its funny for most of the time Viv does act like she's on something. As we finally get into town, we take a quick stop at the supermarket to pick up a box of candles and two large candles that have a one and four. The kind that you see at kid's birthday parties. The Trattoria isn't as crowded as I thought it would be and as we sit down, Vivi sticks a one and four into our two slices of pizza and seven candles in each of our mozzarella balls. I can't help but think of how unimportant it is to turn fourteen. Not much is in store for me this year and yet I can't help but just be happy with everything.

-Ann

Fiona's card