Me, around the age of the offending site.

In the early 2000s, Saint Louis teenagers flocked to a social networking site called STLPunk. Despite the name, it was not a punk mecca; instead emo kids (remember those?), goths and essentially much any person between the ages of 13 and 17 had a page on which to communicate with other teens in the city. I hopped on the now-defunct site when I was 14, and used it for about two years to meet friends, find new music and post gratuitously vain photos of myself.

I thought all embarrassing evidence of my page had been erased with the demise of the site, but my friend Brett recently proved me wrong with a simple link on my Facebook wall. There it was, in all its horrific, angst-filled glory: a screengrab of 15-year-old Andrea Kinnison’s STLPunk site. “Brett, I don’t know whether to slap you or thank you for posting that,” I wrote back. Because my old page is filled with every reminder I wanted to forget about my early teenage self. Just look at it; I was terrible!

Eventually, however, I decided to thank Brett for the harsh reminder, because looking back on your former self can be just as hilarious as it is mortifying. So, without further extrapolation, I present you with my favorite, most cringe-worthy lines from my STLPunk page.

1. “When I have to die, I would like to die/on a day of rain–/long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.” Naturally there had to be poetry on my page; I was a 15-year-old girl! And the death theme nicely contributed the angsty-yet-intelligent persona I wanted to project. I was deep, you guys. Deep, and yet still searching. You know.

2. “Not smart enough
Not pretty enough
Not normal enough;
I’ll never be good enough for you,
And that’s all I want to be.
The story of my life;
Never enough”

I wasn’t just some non-artistic joker who lifted other people’s poems, however; here’s a gem of my own writing. I’m sure it took a lot of thought, and not just piecing together select musings from my Livejournal entries. I’m also pretty sure this was a passive-aggressive cry for attention from some boy or another. As with vague Facebook statuses, STLPunk pages were the perfect arena to throw insults, confess unrequited love or covertly complain about people without explicitly addressing them.

3. “I would love to just be myself, my awesomely weird, unique, self. But I would need courage to do that, and I’m rather insecure. But just because I’m insecure, I’m not going to pretend I’m someone I’m not…I’m ME.” Do I smell a bit of humble-bragging in here? Or perhaps it’s compliment-fishing? Apparently I wanted to know everyone how awesome I was, but was too insecure to show it. I suspect that I was trying to get the aforementioned boy to “help” with my insecurity by telling me how “awesomely weird” and “unique” I was.

4. “I hate labels.” What 15-year-old girl hasn’t written this? As someone who obsessively wrote poetry in my Livejournal, liked to think of myself as “random,” dyed my hair wacky colors and did “photography,” I’m going to go ahead and disappoint my past self by labeling her as “wannabe Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”

5. “Lay your hands on me one last time…” -Breaking Benjamin. ‘Nuff said.

I mean, I guess someone did say, “i like that ‘never enough’ poem. ur a good writer” in the comments on my page, so I have some positive feedback to revel in. Overall, though, I am slightly mortified that my current Facebook friends have seen this past side of me. Nonetheless, I hope everyone got a good laugh out of it. And that no one ever tracks down my Xanga from high school.

Do you have any embarrassing Internet history?