I need to buy a paper journal and relearn the delicate art of holding a pen. I haven't kept one in six years, and I feel that I've been missing something terribly important.
I stood in the journal section of a Barnes and Noble yesterday, picking some up and weighing them in my hands, running my fingers across the covers and spines, picturing my ugliest thoughts in their pages. None of them were quite right. I remember this ritual from Before The Internet, when paper was a priest to me, if not every day then almost, from the age of thirteen on. The books had to be perfect, inspire prolific unflattering honesty. I wrote everything in them, not just the periodic, sanitized musings I publish here or the more conversational mass-broadcasts of Livejournal. I wrote when I hated myself, and I wrote when I hated you. I wrote my most vulnerable doubts and the saddest birthday wishes.
Reading back now, I see how so little has changed — it gives me faith in the concept of my soul. It's heartening to recognize myself in the words I wrote fifteen years ago, to realize that there is a core of me which remains steady despite changing weather. Knowing nothing of philosophy, I don't have the words to describe the existential charge I get from seeing me in... myself.
And the perspective is invaluable. I've been sad this week and feeling lost. It's hard to be sad when so many nice things are happening to me, but I'm a real trouper; I'm diligently melancholy. I've been taking stock of my little world, and it doesn't look like it used to.
I moved far away. I'm not sure why I thought nothing would change. Maybe I've been spoiled — my best friend lives a billion miles away and I manage to feel close to her every day. But I've been putting most of my other friendship eggs in one clique basket for years now, and I just recently noticed that the basket's not in the best shape. It's coming unwoven, or there's a hole in the bottom, and maybe the basket doesn't call or write. I'm trying to come to terms with it.
Reading the old journals paints reemerging patterns of loss and gain, periods of frenzied socializing and insular silence. It's always been this way. It's good to experience those adolescent moments again, from a distance, as they repeat themselves. They wear unconvincing disguises, and I see them for what they are. Same shit, different decade. It's like having a mom on paper, telling me that everything will be okay. I can read my heart break and mend in the span of twenty pages, over and over. It will always be okay.
And the truth is, I love the friends I do have. My life feels full, and I don't need to pad some cosmic guest list. Some of my newer friends are among the best I've ever had, some of my oldest friends are always dear, and one never can tell about the erstwhile companions. History tells me they tend to pop up at the most unexpected times.
