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Forgive me, Tuesday, for I have sinned.
8/31/10 08:48 pmMost people, upon leaving high school, gleefully throw the remnants of their schooling, all those countless papers and notebooks, into the wastebasket and never look back -- but not I, not I. I hold my things until my thirties, bury them in boxes and let them age, like the most rancid of wines, until I can look at them, run my hands over them, pull them from their shed and sneeze at their mustiness. I can look and read and see these things, remember to the underskin how much my life disintegrated when I was seventeen, see the sharp uptick in profanity in my notes, in my poems -- and oh, the poems. The poems. Nothing good can come of reading the the things you wrote when you were fifteen, still wet and shiny behind the ears.
I can look at the detritus of my entire teenage life, see it sprawled on the floor in front of me, watch myself learn to draw, learn to write, see all the "40/40! A! Good job! Nice essay, clear and well-writen [sic]*!" notes on my critiques of books I never wanted to read and will probably never read again.
I can flitter through those love letters, not written to me, but still found in my possession, cry a little at the dried rose petals that drift to the cement and dirty the carpet. Know that the lessons learned and the lessons taught will never be erased.
I have kept my life here, in these boxes, waiting for me to come and claim it. Perpetual and inexorable, my teenage self is sitting with me again, scowling at her ill-fitting boots, stolen from her mother's shop or bought second-hand at a thrift store, or writing furiously in a notebook because there is no one to listen to her howling distress.
I'd forgotten some of these things, how I tried to achieve a pinnacle of polyamory before I'd even left high school, and failed, because when you are fifteen, sixteen, with none of the vocabulary or understanding of emotions, when you are trying to compensate through the lives of others for your own unhappiness at home -- I leave it there for you to draw your own sad conclusions.
I'm going to throw most of it away now, finally lay her to rest, sweet and quiet as she finally sleeps, her hair fuzzily curling on the flannel sheets. Her cat is there, that fine and furry tortoiseshell she grew up with, and Penny will tuck herself under her chin and purr.
*I'm not even joking here, people. An English teacher. My god.
I can look at the detritus of my entire teenage life, see it sprawled on the floor in front of me, watch myself learn to draw, learn to write, see all the "40/40! A! Good job! Nice essay, clear and well-writen [sic]*!" notes on my critiques of books I never wanted to read and will probably never read again.
I can flitter through those love letters, not written to me, but still found in my possession, cry a little at the dried rose petals that drift to the cement and dirty the carpet. Know that the lessons learned and the lessons taught will never be erased.
I have kept my life here, in these boxes, waiting for me to come and claim it. Perpetual and inexorable, my teenage self is sitting with me again, scowling at her ill-fitting boots, stolen from her mother's shop or bought second-hand at a thrift store, or writing furiously in a notebook because there is no one to listen to her howling distress.
I'd forgotten some of these things, how I tried to achieve a pinnacle of polyamory before I'd even left high school, and failed, because when you are fifteen, sixteen, with none of the vocabulary or understanding of emotions, when you are trying to compensate through the lives of others for your own unhappiness at home -- I leave it there for you to draw your own sad conclusions.
I'm going to throw most of it away now, finally lay her to rest, sweet and quiet as she finally sleeps, her hair fuzzily curling on the flannel sheets. Her cat is there, that fine and furry tortoiseshell she grew up with, and Penny will tuck herself under her chin and purr.
*I'm not even joking here, people. An English teacher. My god.
