I was so at ease describing anything in my life. Some days I cannot remember at all and some I remember better than yesterday. I’m not exactly sure yet what I want to do with them, I keep waiting for it to come to me.
I’ll read the rest of senior year and the summer before college and then maybe that’s where this should start again, or go back to, or whatever happens in the space between trying to remember and trying to forget.
October of 2003 in Ohio.
How was anything 20 years ago?
It’s funny because there were so many times when I thought of this exact thing— being a real grown up and coming here to write. I’d try and imagine my real grown up adult life without it and I could not. I did not imagine smart phones, 2003 me would be terribly disappointed with these little computers we hold in our hands.
2023 me almost knows what to do with it. Almost, I am just not yet entirely there.
I miss telling everyone everything. I miss it being a secret, I miss it being a rumor. I miss your faces when you were young, not because of what age did to you, that I love to see. It’s something else. The closest I can get to time travel.
When you are older, I will tell you I was young and I needed the money. When I am older, I will tell you the truth. They're not the same story, reader, though I’ve learned to make it sound that way. It helps. Usually I am referencing a specific space and time that is already over, something that I already miss. Not now. Now, I am horribly and deeply aware. Staring. Present.
I thought about this moment before. Today, exactly, sort of. I wondered "in twenty years from now, will I still be writing in my livejournal?" I had just deleted Apathyoverdose, the original blog I had made my freshman year of high school. It was the summer before senior year, I was seventeen years old & feeling fresh, brand new--- I had no idea that I really was, reader. I thought I was already done for and old. I was sure my greatest loves were behind me; I was absolutely floored with the idea that this was supposed to be life. I wanted to shape it and mold it, I’d take the picture and write the story and let life match in that order. I wanted pictures of the themed party but more than that I wanted us to be the theme one more time. I never wanted us to stop playing pretend. Is that why you all have children now? Does it get to be make believe again or is it something for someone else?
I didn’t think I’d be typing on a phone. I imagined an even bigger desktop. I thought I’d be in Los Angeles or New York City or Paris. I thought, I thought, I thought.
Do you feel sad about all of the things you’ve already forgot?
I miss memorizing words but not as much as I miss knowing what they mean.
I miss knowing all of your phone numbers by heart. Everyone I loved was always seven numbers away and tethered to a wall.
I feel sad because I don’t remember how to use calling cards. I can’t even remember all the words I’ve learned, let alone how to use them correctly in sentence.
I am feeling maybe 10% better. I made Sawyer go on a mindless four mile walk but he just turned 10 and it’s harder for him to keep up. I miss writing and my old brain. My writing brain. Maybe it’s a muscle I just need to flex, maybe the body remembers when the mind cannot. I wanted to write something about the May 4th massacre or my time at Kent State or how everyone is dead now but I didn’t. The words didn’t come but maybe they will. Maybe they are still around somewhere. I don’t know how to create a routine right now. I’m going to go paint my toe nails and do a face mask and try and be nice to myself the rest of the day.
A Course in Miracles says "There are no private thoughts..the universe & God & everyone picks it up." Maybe that is what I was trying to tell you all along, but you already knew, reading my brain from across the page, the room, the universe.
The charts kept talking about The Saturn Return but I never thought girls could be mean after you were thirteen; after blood dropped down everyone's thighs and we were women.
All the dogs growl now like wolves and maybe the only warning is that we have to go back somewhere else soon where they don't design anything.
I should have known from the get go with the dry erase board but I wanted to believe everybody; I wanted to believe everything.
It's the prettiest room but I lived alone for a long time. I think my head has hurt like this for 3 months and 7 years.
