erased

I have this huge plastic tub in the basement.  The contents of the tub had been in a cardboard box for the past 20+ years, but after the basement flooded a while back, I reluctantly made the transfer.  I wish the tub was still a cardboard box, but when that basement flooded and we were far away on a skiing trip, all that I could think of was that box, my box.  And all of my memories, the memories that I chose to save, soggy and wet and destroyed.

If you looked in the plastic tub, you wouldn't get it.  All you would see is random things that would look like a bunch of garbage, mostly papers.  Things that don't seem to make much sense.  You'd think that maybe it was stuff that I forgot to throw out when I moved away from home for the first time.   Just a bunch of stuff in a box.

Among the stuff in the box, the random papers, notes and things, there are diaries and journals.  The very first diary was from when I was in fifth grade, the red and satiny cover always reminding me of a kimono.  Every time I flip through that diary I laugh at myself.  I remember being 10 or 11 and suddenly unsure and just a little uncomfortable with myself, teetering on the edge of wanting to play Barbies with the girl around the block but not wanting to look like a baby.

The writing was sporadic until about 8th grade.  In eighth grade, I had an English teacher, Mrs. Armstrong.  She was an odd little lady, pretty high strung with tight black curly hair and glasses.  That first day of class she told us we would be keeping a daily journal.  Just a plain spiral notebook, nothing fancy.   A lot of moaning and groaning from kids in the class followed, of course.  The teacher didn't care if we wrote a page of nothing each day, but we were expected to write a page.  A page of words.  My words were never nothing.  I never had to take that pass and just scratch I hate English as many times as would fit on that one side of the page.  I wrote because my teacher said she wouldn't read what we had written.  She said all that she would do was check to see that we had written.  I accepted that, believed her.  I wanted an excuse to write things out, get things down.  And I wrote.  And wrote and wrote and wrote.  I loved that daily assignment.

That class made me love English.  Our English book was one of stories and short novels.  As an avid reader I was  always drawn to reading ahead.  I remember reading Flowers for Algernon and crying for the first time while reading a book, feeling the emotion in the words.  I remember reading Edgar Allan Poe, scared but still muddling through the Tell Tale Heart.  And reading one of my favorites in the collection, the Gift of The Magi.  I think I finished reading all of the stories well before the first half of the semester.  I couldn't put the book down.

When I finished eighth grade, I just naturally continued journaling.  It was hard to stop, it had become a great outlet.  It felt really good to get things out on paper.  I'd fill a new notebook a few times a year.  So many of words - thoughts, memories, hurts, moments.  When I shuffle through the pages of my journals now, I think to myself that I want to burn those notebooks.  I hate the way I sounded.  Immature and needy and self conscious and uncomfortable in my skin.  I hate reminding myself of things that I want to forget.  Bad things, scary things, embarrassing things.  Sad things.

I know that I was young then, but I don't like excuses.

I'm going to burn those notebooks.  Maybe if I know that I won't ever have to see the words again, I will finally be able to get past some of the things that I never allow myself to get past.  Maybe if I know that nobody will ever chance to read those words of mine and see what a needy mess I was, I'll remember less and less myself.

Maybe that would be a good thing.

I realize that destroying those records won't erase the parts of my past that haunt me.  But I can try...