Last night, I walked past my bookshelf and glanced at one of the two spiral-bound notebooks leaning against the oversized Dan Eldon book. One notebook has a collection of terrible charcoal drawings I made in a period when I imagined I could practice my way into talented charcoal artistry. The other notebook would be empty were it not full of pages torn from my heart. Words and drawings and even a few photos and items lie pasted within like monuments to emotion drunk while in the throws of various failing relationships. I suppose it’s the closest thing I have to an honest journal other than this blog before you.
The journal flew into my hand almost against my will. I had avoided it for years out of respect for scars, sleeping dogs and curious cats. Yet I began to read. I remember the almost traumatic process of scribbling down the words. They were so personal that I wrote sentences in between other lines in order to confuse anyone who might steal them.
They seemed so terrible and deliciously morose back then, like I could reveal them to a high paying audience who would soak up the meat juice with ready black bread. Yet looking at the words now revealed a world of a confused and immature boy. I stand in the present looking back at this person and what he thought. I want to shake him and wake him up. Maybe it’s easy for me to forget what he was going through, all the details and precious important factors. This person seems silly to me though now. I want to tell him, but it’s too late.
A post-breakup letter bides its time ready for a girl who will never read it, pleading for her return. A phrase I used sticks with me like a holy token. I wrote the letter a decade ago, though I am not sure since there is no date attached. How sad that I haven’t changed that part of myself yet for the better, after everything that I’ve learned and experienced. Surely the passage of an ocean of time would have worn down all of my rough edges. Yet at least one remains visible now as it was then.
So much changes in this life. A good friend of mine is having her last day at work tomorrow, and then she’s moving off to another state. Friends come and go from your life, but I think she’s one of the precious few that I want to stay friends with for a long time.
I’ll have to write another letter in the journal to keep it going. Maybe in another ten years, I won’t be so disappointed.
