Happy Birthday to Me...! Day 12

 

I have spent the better part of the evening reading through these... My diaries.  The Hello Kitty one I started on my birthday 7/12/1980.  It chronicled the pre-teen drama that surrounds that time when you're transitioning from dependent 8th grader to less dependent high schooler.  It describes the crushes and infatuations that come before finally meeting and having that pure and true first love.

Book 2 is the teddy bear which starts on my birthday 7/12/1983.  Right in the middle between sophomore and junior year.  That first love is meeting with the challenges of increased lust crashing head on with Catholic morality and upbringing.  It did not end well.  The journal then continues on with insignificant infatuations and goal-setting leading up to making decisions about college, and then finally being accepted and choosing careers and schools.

Book 3 picks up somewhere around the end of my college career as I start to make plans for my future.  It's funny to see the different penmanship styles in my first journal and how they changed as I matured.  The voice of the 12 year old me being so different from the voice of my 20 year old self.

I also found some "treasures" hidden in the pages... 

A final birthday note from my grandmother signed the year she died...

Some poetry I wrote...

And love letters I never sent...

It's strange to see my life now and wonder about the person who wrote those words... What would I tell her if I could....?  What different decisions would she make knowing where she would eventually end up...? Sometimes I guess it might be better letting life happen and continuing being a witness to it.  

I read parts of my journal to a friend tonight.  In this way I am her memory too... And a part of all the lives that have been mentioned on those pages... No matter where they are, they have been recorded so as not to be forgotten...