17-Year-Old Summer Camp Journal Entries
The feeling of sisterhood, summer, strawberries, and dripping sweat.
“i hope you felt the fireworks. i hope you saw the wonder when skies filled up with color. And in the moment, i hope you were reminded that it’s possible, that beauty still happens. We don’t only live in books awake and dreams asleep. We are living our stories you and i, with dreams inside us undeniable, love to give and people to walk with.” - jamie tworkowski
Today’s note is going to be a few journal entries I wrote in 2015 while I was working at a summer camp in East Texas. Not only do I feel like it encapsulates the feeling of sisterhood, summer, sweatiness, and the coziness the 4th of July can bring (which I know is hard to have this year). But this summer is when God started a now decade-long healing journey with me, starting with my relationship to fireworks. The blog post I attached that correlates with Jamie Tworkowski’s quote is also found in his book, If You Feel Too Much. On my free weekends, I would curl up in my top bunk and read this book, and I watched it begin to change a very rigid, self-conscious girl into an open, courageous one. So much of the reflection I gave in this journal entry was sparked by Jamie’s words in that book. He also has a Substack if you’re interested in reading.
This specific entry contains some names that I am re-naming for the sake of privacy. But I hope you enjoy the words my 17-year-old self spilled onto her diary pages.
June 20th, 2015
I’m sitting in my bunk, sighing because I think we’re all learning more about life and about each other than we ever anticipated we would. We’ve spent hours laughing, smiling, and singing songs in the dining hall...but now, we’re spending a lot of time getting teary-eyed. Overhearing one of us snap at the other. Not even being able to speak at all, sitting in criss-cross applesauce in a storage closet, exhausted and silent. We’re being called out, we’re stepping on each other's toes. We’re watching each of our hearts get pricked, pushed, pulled, pruned...a front row seat to each of our brokenness. Fully knowing each other, learning how to fully love. Sometimes we’ve done it well, other times we’ve done it terribly. We’ve ignored each other, blamed each other...But I think we’re all seeing the other change. We’ve been characters in a confusing yet monumental chapter in all of our stories.
I’m not sure if my words are sounding really cutesy and friendship-y, but I want to stress how hard this has really been. Having someone call you out on how you’re overthinking something simple is hard. Realizing someone was depending on you to notice and give them the same meal they’ve eaten for the past 3 weeks at lunch - but you didn’t notice because you were too focused on how someone else forgot to get you hard-boiled eggs for your lunch...it’s stupid, but it is hard. Having someone challenge the way you treat your dad is hard. But what makes all of this hard isn’t necessarily the heat of the moment when it’s happening, but the fact that the people involved showing you these things about yourself are actually in the right.
Something beautiful happens next, though.
There’s magic hidden in this vulnerable transparency. When someone looks through your darkness, into your doubts, into what makes you broken… and they choose love.
I feel as though five girls have moved into my heart during these long days and fast weeks. It’s been as much of a dream as it has been a literal nightmare. It’s enriching and enlivening.
And it’s funny because even in the midst of all of this, our little room makes me want to write in cursive. What I mean by that is, usually when you see an ocean, or your favorite band in concert, or the most awe-inspiring sunset, or the most soul-awakening fireworks, you try to capture it through a camera lens. But when you go through the pictures afterward, it didn’t do the moment justice in the slightest. That’s how I feel about writing in cursive right now. Where we are feels so sacred that it deserves to be written about in a special way, but this cursive is still not capturing how I feel about our bunk beds, messy shelves, and boxes of snacks. Opened letters and packages fill the stained evergreen carpet...a container that was once used to store the contents of these letters and packages is now being used to hold the underwear, socks, and sports bras of three teenage girls. Books, Bibles, XL t-shirts, tangerine socks, sinfully smelly shoes, taped-up pictures on the wall, acoustic indie playlists filling the air...that’s what you get when you place the “artsy” girls in the same room, I guess, haha.
Speaking of the girls in this program with me...
Greta is the true artist and late-night snacker of the group. It makes me livid when she gets us in trouble for stashing Oreos in her bunk, even though I honestly can’t blame her. She has more guts than all of us combined, and I deeply respect her for it. She approaches life with this wildness and is more concerned with actually living than following the rules, *cough* the polar opposite of me *cough*, which is why the Lord probably has us in the same room. Because even through her reckless nature, I see her self-consciousness about her scars from days of self-hate. I see the scars, and it breaks my heart in half. Her outgoing nature is as charming as it can be overwhelming, yet she somehow remains warm and thoughtful and exudes a unique toughness that differs from the rest of us.
Clem is the quietly excited and secretly lively one of the five of us. The true introvert. Aka, my kindred spirit in this group, haha. She enjoys singing show tunes at any given time, and she is dedicated to mastering sign language with a passion that is unmatched. She tends to believe this big, fat lie that she’s meant to be mediocre, and I would do anything to show her otherwise. She prefers to follow, but is such a genuine leader. Our Mama sees it too. I know sometimes the situations Mama places her in are frustrating, but it’s been so amazing to see her confidence strengthen and awaken within her. I think the thing that all of us admire the most about Clem though, is how she actually can think before she speaks - a skill that the rest of us very much lack. She may not say a lot, but when she speaks, it’s filled with intentionality and meaning. I aspire to be more like that.
And this bunk bed? Oh man. This bunk bed is only holding up because of the belly laughs that have occurred on it with Sam. Sam and I have clicked since the beginning. She’s climbed up into this suffocating space at any hour of day or night, and she makes it feel safe with her ideas and goofiness. Our moments sharing secrets and making jokes are the only thing that feels like camp during this program. Our sisterhood can’t be broken! She’s confided in me here, asked for and has given advice here, but most importantly, she’s grabbed my ukulele and transformed into Phoebe from Friends here, giving a concert about a smelly cat that would only be permissible at Central Perk or in this cabin. She’s been struggling with rejection while being here because she so desires to be liked and admired; her conversational abilities and orientation towards being with people have shown to be her biggest strength and weakness. But I see those abilities, and this time it’s making her stronger than ever.
Rory has honestly been the hardest for me to connect with. She appears to have it all together, something I aspire to have as well. Which is maybe why we haven’t connected too deeply. She’s stunning, warm, humorous, thoughtful, intelligent - literally the whole package. Whoever marries her is a blessed man. We both have this pounding fear in our heads of never measuring up, never being good. She’s the most composed out of all of us, and it’s been sweet to see her connect in a more vulnerable way with our Mama. She’s also not a fan of big burps and apparently, her family owns illegal chickens, which I somehow still feel like fits the essence I just described, haha.
Lastly, our Mama, or Caroline. I believe her to be the bravest of all of us. The fact that she continually is pointing out our faults in pursuit of growth, risking resentment and hatred from each of us?? Showing us what real discipline, patience, and humility look like - all while doing so with a grace that I can’t explain?? She demands attention, yet I feel like she is a true free spirit. We’ve learned so much from her passion and insight, and have also gotten to witness moments of awkward dates, and jabby sassiness and sarcasm from the sidelines. Perhaps I feel she is the bravest and the strongest because she may even be the most terrified out of all of us. Yet she’s choosing to wake up, every single day, with confidence in the Lord. She is going afraid and in faith to do what the Lord has called her to do during this time, out of complete obedience. She’s helped us believe deeply in the power of the gospel and the beauty of womanhood.
Anyway. This is the longest journal entry ever. But I guess this is the “richness of life”. All of us have two more weeks of life change, dishes, and working definitions. We’ll see what the Lord has.
June 25th, 2015
Mrs. Linda’s House.
“What initially turned me on to Ms. Linda was her cooking.” - Henry, her husband
Tonight was again, cursive worthy. We had our first home-cooked meal in 4 weeks, family style. It included: potatoes, homemade biscuits, squash, zucchini, mushrooms, chicken, pork, chocolate pie, AND...GLUTEN-FREE CHOCOLATE PIE. We looked through scrapbooks, heard stories about simpler times, gleaned from generous wisdom, and were shown a level of hospitality that could only be explained by a humble state of heart. Ms. Linda and Henry’s story was inspiring, and the way Henry believes in the power of Jesus in the hearts of women changed something in me. Their house felt like a home I grew up in, but had never been to. Sitting on their back patio, getting pleasantly sweaty by the fire in the middle of an East Texas summer, surrounded by thrifted garden gnomes...I will cherish this evening forever.
July 1st, 2015
Last night was our last official deep clean. We finished the night by dancing to Mama’s college acapella group and eating loads of banana cake. It seemed fitting.
Funny Lil’ Moments
(This was in the very back of my journal)
“Mentally?” - Cade, a camper, after we asked if he was okay when he had tripped and fallen
“Can you wash this for me?” - Randy, Cade’s best friend, also a camper, who asked me this while holding an actual empty turtle shell that smelled rancid
“Now that we have all of our hats we can really look like a cult.” - Rory
“Well, I mean, it went up in flames so you could say she was pretty spiritual.” - Angie
“Better is more than less.” - Sam
“Sexually-wise…?“ - Rory
“There’s something there that wasn’t there before..” - Sam, singing in the kitchen / “Yeah, Sam, dishes.” - Greta
*deserves special mention
Clem wearing two different shoes unintentionally for almost an entire day, with none of us realizing
Mandy pantsing Caroline and then asking me to pants Brandon
New Jersey accents
“I do it for my Tina”
“Sister spa weekend”
“Dr. Pepper and dibs”
When I tried to say Dr. Pepper and Dibs to a camper, but instead I said, “d*ck?” and I started crying because I thought I was going to get sent home
Attempted handstands
Bones bit and palace
Clem’s vivid dreams
Rory’s illegal chickens
When we “borderline interrupted camp”
Payton tearing her frenula
