I own no less than 20 journals and diaries. None of them have been written in past the first two pages and I really can’t explain why. I usually get them when I mention that I write to someone I don’t know well, so a few months when later my birthday rolls around I’m suddenly the proud owner of a tasteful leather-bound blank book (or possibly some bright pink plastic monstrosity). And each time I vow that this time, this time, I’m going to do it right, that instead of scribbling random bits on napkins and the backs of envelopes, I’m going to collect it all in one neat, easy, permanently bound space. I open it up that very day, neatly print the date in the upper right hand corner, and proceed to put down a few words about who gave me this marvelous (or possibly tacky) new book, the occasion, my determination to actually use this one, and go on to dutifully describe my current thoughts and mood. Sometimes I even pick it up the next day and write something creative on the following page. And invariably, a year or more later I find it under the bed, beside a bookshelf, at the back of my closet, and wonder why did I stop writing in this? But the last dated entry was so long ago that I feel silly making another, so I just set it aside.
How did I possibly convince myself that a blog would be any different?
I won’t even bother apologizing. I will, however, go ahead and post something I typed up about a month ago after driving across the state to visit my mom. I promise to make a concerted effort to cut and paste more from the various untitled text files littering my documents folder. Maybe even some poetry to make up for lost time; wouldn’t that be a treat? (I feel compelled to advise you to skip ahead at the first sign of irregular lines breaks. Really. It’s better for us both that way.)
My old bedroom is a weird, unappealing mix of trash and treasure, like a museum and dump yard all in one: my penguin collection, boxes of books, my old furniture, my mother’s sewing desk, all my journals from those years (HA!), the curtains I put up just a month before I moved away, and a closet full of junk I left behind, all of it covered in a heavy layer of grey dust that feels strangely soft when you touch it. I always find it disquieting to be back there, a sort of fearful nostalgia, old anxieties creeping in and a feeling that I don’t really know myself, who I was or who I’ve become. It was almost overwhelming this time, to be an adult in my child’s room and have no idea how those two times are connected, how a few years could have changed me so much, how easy it is to remember my childhood wrong, different, write it into something that makes it easier to live with or justifies the choices I’ve made since then. You see how confusing this is? It’s worse when I’m in the middle of it. Existential angst and moral anxiety, the binary solution that’s compounded so much of my life, and why the hell does my childhood always boil down to a science metaphor?
Instead of running from it, getting out of the house or at least into the living room, I had a strange urge to dive head first into it, to sift through the strata of my adolescence and try to make some sense out if it. This isn’t remarkable in and of itself; I spend more time than is strictly healthy revisiting the past, searching through and analyzing, trying to inject some meaning into that abiding sense of failure. Somehow, though, I did something different this time.
There are several large boxes in the top of my closet that have been there so long I’d forgotten what was in them. The first one was strangely light, like it was empty, and turned out to be the Box of Galahad, as I like to call it, a place to lock up all the memories of a certain ex-boyfriend. I think “high school sweetheart” is the most appropriate way to describe him, with the silly romantic overtones and genuine, endearing naiveté it implies. And while he was most certainly was a sweetheart, the term “boyfriend” seems somehow inappropriate in retrospect. When we broke up after our first year away at college I couldn’t stand to see all the pictures and keepsakes, but I just wasn’t angry enough to throw any of it away. Hence, the box. The name is a much longer story.
I began to look through it all with a sort of detached curiosity, the hurt having faded as I had hoped (but never quite believed) it would when I packed everything into it in the first place. Pictures and gifts and so many flowers. So many. More flowers from those months than the rest of my life combined several times over. Mostly roses, mostly pink or peach, and it was strange to remember how shamelessly girly I had let myself be with him. There were no less than five stuffed animals, silly little things that I so rarely let myself admit I like, but that had made me smile, and he would do almost anything to get me to smile. I found myself overwhelmed as I looked through it all to remember how good he was to me, the awkward tenderness that’s a cornerstone of his personality, how he never once put me down or treated me with anything less than respect. I was just washed in a sense of gratitude, almost incredulous that anyone could ever have been so consistently kind to me. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a little voice (If it was so perfect, why aren’t you missing him? Why are you so calm?) but it was surprisingly easy to ignore. Maybe I’ve finally found some kind of emotional maturity. Maybe my denial just finally went deep enough it overcame the reality. I’m okay with either.
At the bottom of the box was a teddy bear in a clear plastic box with a few pieces of chocolate. He gave it to me for Valentine’s Day, my first real Valentine gift ever, so it had been terribly special to me. The bear smelled like chocolate and was in the box with the chocolates in an attempt to make sure the smell never went away. (This was a potentially powerful and heartbreaking metaphor for my approach to romance, and really life in general, but I wasn’t quite there yet.) I kept it on a shelf above my bed and would pull it down and crack the lid, bask in that smell, at the end of a bad day or when I missed him. The memory made me smile, and I opened the lid to smell it again, wanting to touch some piece of the me that was then, the simple, clean affection I had for him.
The feeling came back in force, untouched by nostalgia or any conscious revision; it was nothing like I remembered. It was a feeling of being unbearably miserable, utterly lost in sadness, and a mindless desperation to feel something, anything else, to create some shadow of joy out of anything I could find. It was sickeningly familiar, and it struck me that this was the feeling that, at the time, I had called “happy.”
I’m overwhelmed by the sadness of it, the sickness of my own heart, but more than anything, the fact that I was so unaware of all that pain when it was the defining characteristic of my personality and the reason for almost every choice I made. I remember crying a lot, and knowing that I was depressed, thinking sometimes that I had more trouble being happy than other people, but looking back now… I think I had been so wrapped up in pain for so long that I forgot how to feel happy. I think I honest to God forgot what happy even felt like. If I were reading a story like that now, about someone else, I think I might cry for the sadness of it. But because it was me I just feeling tired, even a little nauseous, and slightly incredulous that things can change so much in just a few years. I laughed earlier today, just a few hours ago, and it felt good. Not only that, but I took it for granted. I’ll probably laugh again before the day is over, smile several times and mean it for at least a few of them. Life now can suck at times, and I’m not really sure I’m doing this “responsible adult” thing very well, but at least I can smile and laugh. It's strange to remember there was a time when I couldn’t even do that.
