As I attempt to wrangle our 4th Floor room into a suitable space were Little A can play and Mommy can make jewelry, I uncovered my stash of journals from high school through college. With some trepidation, I sat down in the floor, cracked one open, and began to read. Man, that was some scary shit. But I was hooked.
Over the next few days I perused the lot of them (about 10 I think). Some were completely full, and in others, only about a third of the pages contained writings. Maybe it's a girl thing to so dutifully record ones thoughts and feelings of a particular age. I'm glad I did. In reading through my journals-all the good times, drama, heartache, bouts of deep depression-I discovered who I was and realized more of who I am today. Mostly, I've grow out of that awkward and miserable teenage skin I used to wear. Yet, there are shadows with me even still of those same insecurities that so plagued and haunted my teens and twenties.
As much as I love to bitch about how much I hated high school and what a total square peg I was, my journals tell a slightly different story. There were a lot of really fun times. I had a circle of good, loyal friends (with a few exceptions) from school, church, and camp.
College-as my memories recall-was a non-stop blast of parties and craziness interspersed with classes and studying. According to my journals, however, there were lots of broken friendships and broken hearts. My insecurities didn't abate with age; in some ways, they worsened during college, and certainly my behavior often reflected this.
It's crazy how much reading through my journals makes me blissfully nostalgic on one hand and totally frustrated on the other. I want to go back in time and shake that silly, stupid girl who was all walled up in her self-hatred, terrified to get close to people. Too shell-shocked by past pain to let her feelings show. I want to slap her and say, "Get over yourself!"
But then, if I hadn't been the girl I was then, said the things I said, made the choices I did...who would I be now? Would I be here in this room with my loving husband clicking away beside me, one of my awesome cats laying between us, and a beautiful baby boy snoozing in the room next door? It is for this reason that while I may ponder the life I have led-even wonder what would have happened had I done or said certain things differently-I cannot regret a single thing because it has all led me down this road to where I now am. And the Where I Now Am is a pretty fine little place.
Post-Script: Once a high school girl friend commented on how awesome it must be to have so many hot guy friends like I did, and at the time I laughed and agreed that it was pretty cool. Now I realize after reviewing the aforementioned stack of teenage musings: Yeah, not so much. It was like being a diabetic at a candy counter and jonesin' for a gummi bear fix.
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You are very brave to go through those journals. I didn't keep quite as much detail of my youth, thankfully, but I don't know that I'd want to revisit it if I did. I do regret some things of my teen years and can't help but think I might have ended up exactly where I am in life without having made some of the stupid choices I did.
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