Archives Past ReEntry sites. Apply What grabs you? Schedule Upcoming ReEntry Editors This week's ReEntry editor is straddling the weird time between high school and college as she awaits the beginning of her first year at Smith College. Until she becomes an 'adult' (with training wheels) in September, she is wasting her summer watching bad television shows, trying (mostly unsuccessfully, with one chipmunk casualty) to learn how to drive, and generally chillin' like the villain the world knows her to be. Meet... Jacqui

"I probably looked very serene, kneeling there with my eyes closed, but inside my head, all I could think was, 'Listen up, you motherfuckers, take good care of him -- make him all right -- or I will not ever forgive you. I need to be able to have him around for a while longer. I'm telling you, not asking. You have no idea how important this is.'"

In the few months that I've been reading Jellyfish (and its previous, much-lauded incarnation, Ephemeris), Siobhan has become something like a character in a book, not so much in the sense that her life seems fictional--far from it, in fact--but in the sense that I've started rooting for her, and I've become really interested in what she chooses to reveal about her life.

The entry I've highlighted is one of my absolute favorites, because it combines the best of Siobhan's writing: evocative description, wry humor, poignant emotion. It's slice-of-life done well, and unassumingly. (Which is, I think, the mark of a truly excellent slice-of-life journal. It doesn't seek to make things sound more interesting than they actually are--they hold an interest of their own.) She details a job interview that challenges before it even really begins, a humorous description that's placed in the context of larger life issues, of the threat of love and loss. After all, isn't that the way life really is most of the time? The stupid, the silly things live right next to the serious and difficult ones and, as Siobhan's writing reminds me, that's the only way to have it.

"I keep waiting for the moment. The moment that sometimes happens in a good Quaker meeting. Where you're sitting in silence and suddenly the light dawns and so forth and the world makes sense and you hum with a little inner peace known only to you. I keep hitting click/refresh in order to make that happen."

From New York to Boston--from Possum Trot, KY, to Manhattan, to Brooklyn, to Boston--CubicleGirl has spent her life trying to define herself, a process which can be both painful and exhilarating. In her exhaustive, nearly-daily journal, she records everything about her life--her fears, her hopes, the challenges she's overcome and the ones she's currently facing. We have the privilege of watching her live a life that is filled with passion and energy.

Here she brings to the surface the anxieties that plague us all, the paralyzing fear of both change and stasis. The raw emotion is instantly accessible, because we've all experienced the conundrum that she faces: is the cost of staying the same really greater than the cost of changing? Too often we don't find out until we're waist-deep in life, and that's where the Cube is--waist-deep, treading water, both fearing it and loving it. "Turn off the tapes," she tells herself. "Step into reality. Put the hamster wheel down. Start typing. Start writing. Start. Just start." Start. Just start. Her journal tells me that she already has.

"Before me was a girl barely holding it together--trying to maintain a veneer of normalcy over the wild, chaotic world inside. She was putting so much effort into appearing normal and yet was failing so completely. I had to choke back my horror--I can’t even begin to imagine what she feels, what she’s dealing with. I don’t know what to do."

Of all of Wobbly's entries that touch on the ups and downs of teaching, coaching, and otherwise working with kids, this is the one that has said the most to me. Here she worries--as a teacher, as a mentor, as a friend--about a girl on the emotional edge, someone who's afraid of living, of the pain of daily life. Her concern is palpable, the girl's wild-eyed fear is very real. It's hard to understand lives in crisis, but Wobbly's view is one we've all shared. And, perhaps because we see through Wobbly's eyes, I wonder what happened to the girl, I wonder if she could be one of my friends. I wonder if she could be me.

More than that, though, I'm touched by this entry because it reminds me of how much the mentors and friends in my life genuinely care about me. It occurred to me while reading this entry that the people in my life want me to be happy not because they don't want to deal with me, but because it's what's most healthy and happy and hopeful for me. I was reminded that it's hard sometimes to feel so helpless, to not know how to reach out, and I remembered that it's not the "answers"--or lack thereof--that really matter.