Liza on Valentines Day, being in love, and herself.

Dear Diary,

Teenage love feels super present now that all the stores are switching their merchandise from used Santa Claus costumes to Valentines Day shit.  Last Valentines Day, my friend and I wore all-black, expressed our newfound teen angst to all those who were watching.  My crush gave me a card and I was giddy, which sort of killed the deadpan mood I was hoping to spread to the annoyingly awkward middle school couples surrounding me, and I remember skipping to my locker and singing A TEENAGER IN LOVE to a tune that sounded right, creating the soundtrack to an imaginary movie about me having a crush and being the only one to dance at the 7th grade dance and biking around the neighborhood and making hot chocolate.  Everything felt perfect, black lip gloss smeared across my chapped lips and my mom's heavy black skirt swishing against my thighs.  There's something addictive about crushes, like listening to the same playlist over and over knowing that it'll get you through the day until you get sick of it and it's just this constant thrumming in the background when you craft or do homework or whatever, and it's specialness is kind of gone.  Crushes LAST in a different way, though--thinking about experiences and songs and excitement and nervousness and movies that I associate with certain crushes gives me a rush of nostalgia and longing, like there's always a piece of me that longs for not as much that person but the excitement of admitting to the piece of notebook paper I write angsty poetry on, or later, a friend, while we watch Arrested Development on the floor of her basement, that I'm in LOVE.
I'm Liza, by the way, thirteen almost fourteen, eighth grade, stuffy but prestigious private school, cracked (not a brand or a nail sticker, actually cracked, like in the olden days) nail polish adorned nails, unmade bed, red cheeks, unfinished but satisfying when I wrote them to-do lists dotting my desk, spotify playlists playing as I clean up my room.  There's so much that comes to mind when I introduce myself--through writing especially, because with writing you can choose how you want to be seen--but I'm holding off on jucier labels for the time being. 
I have to go work out now, watch 30 Rock, think about roller derby, and then read about soil in my science textbook.
Love,
Liza

the crew.

The Crew came about when a dad asked how the crew was doing.  It’s what we joke about calling ourselves and the table we sit at, our semi-ode to Mean Girls and Heathers and the kind of girl-gang-movie-exclusivity we pride ourselves on not having but secretly sort of desire.  We’ll post in diary entry style, inspired by the Dear Diary aspect of Rookie Magazine, and though we don’t know what this will or won’t turn into, we’re hoping to be able to use this really public forum as a way to embrace the kind of shit that comes up in diaries wrapped in tissue paper underneath an unmade bed—cheesy, awkward, melodramatic, entries that talk to the diary like it’s a living breathing human whose sole job is to take in secrets, experimental swearing, smears of chocolate, unfinished collages and political statements.  Crushes and secrets and rants and anecdotes and LIFE.  We hope that this can become a blog for girls to be inspired by or, almost more importantly, to relate to, to help them (us) feel like there’s a huge clan of confusing, sexy, awkward, gangly, noisy, confident, bitchy, fantastic humans spread out around the world. 

Sincerely,

the crew.