Between family visiting, work, and being sick I didn't get to do anything until recently. My first REAL evening home was just a couple of days ago (Tuesday, to be exact). I contemplated the whole 4 minute drive home whether I had the stamina for acquiring journals and beginning the long trek backwards (and forwards). My mind was made up for me when I checked my mail.
Finding myself almost at the end of my last journal - created by the lovely Lola Nova - I knew I had to have another so I ordered and here it is!
And she added a lovely goodie to go with it! I can't wait to begin filling this lovely, cuddly, fantastical journal with all sorts of things - but I must finish the last one. So the last 10 pages or so have been dedicated to this traversing across space and time of self.
I opened my storage closet, unload 8 heavy bins of china, crystal, silver, Halloween decor, and boxes upon boxes of books I couldn't fit in my apartment (although now that I've seen them again they might be traveling to my bedroom because I miss them so much), and managed to open - just a bit - the hope chest wherein my journals and old letters are stored. It took much cursing and prying to bust the cardboard box out of the chest.. in fact, I had to struggle to keep the chest open with one had and rip the box into pieces so I could pull all the items out.
It seemed fitting that it should be a difficult process. Oh the things I found.. I haven't even looked at the letters yet...
Here they are. From 1994 to date. 17 years of me. 17 years of changing penmanship, skipped words, and lots of nonsensical, delusional blathering.
But patterns are there; within pages of even the most horrible journal ever created (that would be 1994-96, which happens to be 14-16 y/o nonsense) patterns hit me in the face. Patterns that set my teeth on edge.
Somehow I didn't manage to capture any of 1997, but it is a small relief. I'm sure some of the letters are dated that year, and they will haunt me enough. But spring of '98, my senior year, and the year I went to Israel. I finished reading that last night.
I've blurred out anything that might be too embarrassing
For me or others :)
This journal was a college prep. English assignment. It is only from March 1998 - May 1998, so mostly about the Israel trip. I found an unsent letter to Angel from the night before I left. It is four pages and sad. The details in this journal - not always details about what I now wish I had captured - are much more thorough. It brings back moments so clearly I can smell the grass at a track meet and hear the gravel crunch under my feet as I say my farewells; it also brings back that horrible 18-year-old heartache, which turns my stomach.
Soon I'll start reading this journal, which is high school graduation and beginning college. The picture above are things from our Sr. trip to San Francisco.
anyway, it has been decided the first journal - which serves absolutely no point as it is neither interesting nor rich in detail - will be burned at the end of it all. It might be joined by some of the others, perhaps just portions, perhaps in total. And there will be lots of drinking.
But the good news is it truly is helping me identify negative behaviour, fears, obsessions, cycles, and what elements make up my very foundation of self and she be kept safe.
I am a little heart broken and cheered, regretful and hopeful, terrified and entertained.
1 comments:
I don't think I would want to or even could go back and visit the past like you are doing. Very brave and confronting thing to do. I hope you find what it is your looking for back there. x
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