old JOURNALS

I'm on a hiatus from "going-out;" as lonely and uneventful as it is on the surface, I'm a home-body and an introvert; I desperately need to be alone and un-bothered from time to time. I prefer this state -- quiet introspection, physical idleness, with sanguine or nostalgic mental bonfires -- over most social settings, if not all of them. And while not typical of 25, I'm comfortable with this hierarchy. 

Certainly by now, I've started to come to terms with the fact that I am an old soul; that's not to say I'm wiser or better-prepared than my peers -- on the contrary, I am in so many ways poorly-adjusted and tormented -- as much as it is to say I simply cannot relate to the haste-filled, haphazard style of modern youth. I'm not a drinker, a smoker, a one-time-sexer, a bump-n-grind dancer, a photogenic fashionista, a rebel hipster, a second-generation estate-endowed débutante, or any cool, funky sort of twenty-something. I'm not sure where and on what -- if any -- spectrum I fall, which is unsettling. If there is a mental-slinky-cresting-and-troughing-down-an-endless-stairwell-of-emotions option, that shall work.

In any event, this evening I decided to peer through my old journals. I do this on rare occasion as it fits with my "searching" moods; those where I'm not sure what it is I need to come to terms with -- particularly before I can soundly end my night and sleep -- but I frantically try to uncover either the release (via writing, largely) or the inspiration (reading, music) which seems to sit just outside of my comprehension. I generally deem these nights productive; what I find is useful, both in the way of what I produce or what I consume. 

Reading my old writing is difficult; it comes in two distinct categories: my middle school diary and those journals I kept when I was very, very sick. Sick in most ways one can be so, which is incredibly hard to admit. The former writings are trivial and embarassing. The latter writings are dark, distant, provocative, and also embarrassing. In both instances, I have always found -- no matter how many years removed -- an enormous disconnect between who I was and who I am. Certainly, who I am is ever-changing, but this dissociation from my past -- the dimming of my memories, the confusion of series of events and situations, the resolution and the result of it all -- is troubling. 

Tonight I opened one of my "recovery" journals. It is nothing but pain and panic, mind-swirling riddles and tornadoes; it's torturous and equallly forgein and familiar. Handwriting impossibly small and calculated, a mind not quite right. I could only skim; I cannot yet re-read this heaviness. Perhaps I should, but not tonight. Not this month. Not this summer. Just not now.

All I wanted to find was an entry where I was happy. 

In all of my recent life one of my happiest moments -- one of the most poignant and clear images I keep -- was when Peter taught me to drive stick in O'Malley's empty parking lot. 2006. 2007. Around then. We had been estranged for some time, as is customary with our ever-tangled friendship, and despite all of my awkwardness, despite so many distances on maps and between hearts, this scene was -- or felt -- pure. First, to second, to third. I screamed with nerves and excitement; he had let me in. Something like sunshine: moving too fast, in sickening circles, on baron asphalt of our oldening childhoods. 

Through my sadness, through the mess I was then, I knew how special that time was; how could I not have? Why didn't I write it down? I get nervous thinking that there are happy memories I'm forgetting every day. 

The night ends with me in a puddle.  Again. I'm not sure I understand much.  And I don't remember how to drive stick.  No one since has taught me anything with such unnameable eloquence or simple grace. Not that I needed convincing on his account, not that I was looking for it to be so, but that moment -- to me then, to me now -- was love.