A Conversation

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a big writing project in mind and a big part of that revolves around the contents of 30 years worth of journals that I have filled up (and saved) since I was 13. I have started re-reading them and just finished volume #3. The entirety of that third edition covered only one month of time during the summer I turned 15. A lot happened that month. I have vowed not to read more than one of these old journals per day. I have discovered that reading the words of my younger self has provoked my heart to feel some kind of way. There almost needs to be a buffer, a cool down period between reading each of these journals. I have made notes of thoughts that pop into my head as I’m reading them. I’m trying to analyze and put a good description to how I’m feeling after I read a complete journal. You have to first know that I wrote with a LOT of detail. There was not a thought or feeling back then that didn’t get explained in detail and analyzed to death in those pages. When I wrote back then, and keep in mind, I still write in a journal even now, I didn’t write to anybody in particular. It wasn’t a “Dear Diary” kind of thing. In fact, I didn’t like the word diary and preferred to call them journals. It’s almost like I was writing to a friend, albeit, someone I didn’t know. I was telling this friend everything that was going on in my life and how exactly I really felt about it. Given that in these early volumes, I was a very young teenager in the 90s, my word choice and how I described things was cringey at best. So much cringe! I have had a LOT of thoughts as I’ve been reading what I wrote about my life 30 years ago. But what really struck me tonight after I finished the third one, is it feels like I’m having an honest to goodness conversation with the girl I used to be. It’s mind boggling to me to think that who I am now is also the same person who wrote these words back then. But it feels so much like I’m literally turning back time and talking to this girl who is so worried about going to high school for the first time. Who is obsessed with a long list of crushes and one or two boys in particular. Whose friends and all these crushes and what people thought of her at school were THE most important things to her. Very little else has been written about so far. There is so much more coming up though! She is talking to me across that proverbial space and time and telling me about her life, and there is so much I want to say back to her. I want to tell her how many of these friends and crushes turn out to be like as adults. Many of them I’m friends with now on Facebook. I know that I didn’t grow up and marry that one boy I was kind of obsessed with. He grew up and got married and had kids and is actually the vice-principal of the very high school I went to! I want so badly to tell her to quit worrying about that other boy, or that one girl is not really as good a friend as you think, or at other times, just don’t do it! I know how it’s going to turn out when you do and how much misery it’s going to cause you down the road. But I can’t tell her any of that. I can only read on as she moves forward and makes the decisions I know she’s going to make. I want to tell her her future and how she’s going to turn out. She finds out eventually though. And I’m glad that she does because as it turns out, we survived all of that and while some of it still hurts and we’re going to start going to therapy soon to finally resolve all the old feelings about it, we turn out o.k. More than o.k. We’re finally happy.