I also found a pdf of my livejournal from 2003-2007.
There are a few things of note here:
1) I was SO PROLIFIC. Maybe not the most prolific but this is a 559 page document, and there's not a lot of white space. Did I peak too soon?
2) There are some gems. Almost every entry I have a snippet of an AIM conversation, and there are some wonderful memories from you people. scottishfiction, lunchdetention, cheshirequeen, heelhearted, ogbanje child...you guys AIM NAMES...I couldn't love you any more.
3) Why, why, WHY did no one tell me that I was unreasonably obsessed with Alex Nagy. Because good lord, 16 year old me, you had a real problem.
4) I couldn't go through all 559 pages, because I have actual things to do, but from the brief things I read I was very obsessed with Hitler for a bit. and then POETRY oh my dear lord poetry.
5) I keep closing this pdf and reopening it because I'll get so painfully embarrassed for myself and then want to go back and keep reading.
What's striking is that the last entry is my recounting of a ridiculous day where I had just acquired Sufjan Stevens tickets, had a really dumb, jealousy-fueled encounter with Alex Nagy, and then ran off into the arms of my then boyfriend, who was categorically an asshole. And it ends there. It's strange, fitting, relevant, that I stopped writing when I started going down the path of being in an abusive relationship. It is perhaps the most fitting example of losing your identity completely to another person. And it has taken me years of trying to get that person back. She's here, she's a sporadic blogger, obviously, but she will never be the same as she once was.
I used to attribute that (the lack of 559 more pages) to life as it stands now, I have a kid, I'm in graduate school. But I, really, always managed to fill a journal, before, no matter what was going on. I loved writing. It's how I processed the world.
I fell for someone so hard last year, so hard, and I wrote a poem about it, like a ridiculously happy celebratory read aloud poem about it.
here is someone that doesn't put words in my mouth
he holds me close and when he leaves instead of alone,
words, the alight in the space he has made in my bed
he leaves, he leaves every time, but the words they stay with me and he asks for nothing in return.
so these words, i smooth them into my sheets.
i let them play across my hands and i twirl them into my hair
i have invited them in and thankfully they have chosen to stay.
so this, this is a love poem for poems
this is a poem that has been gestating for 8 years
and lemme tell you, that's a long time to go without a poem, right?
and i don't ____ you
but I, you-gave-me-words-back, you
and thank you for that
the thing is,
i feel them slipping away again. and i know that means i'm not being myself. and i want to find the villains, the assholes, the reasons for this. but when i find them, why do i invite them to stay? they are here on my back porch, taking up the room of these words that I fought so hard to find again.
go away assholes. demons of apathy and emptiness. now that I know your names I have armed myself with poems and love and light and 559 pages of livejournal entries where 10 years ago me, while quite ridiculous in some respects (guh the alex nagy stuff is just EMBARASSING) had a few things right, she loved words, she was unafraid of them, and she never, ever questioned that they would leave her.
words, i won't ever let you go again.
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