The unwary observer would have been on the floor, laughing hysterically, as I pondered the existence of a simple, hand-made wooden box, and it’s contents: Several thin sheets of wood-pulp coated in graphite marks in a laughable attempt of conveyance of emotion through the child-like mangling of language.
As I turned over the book in my hands, lightly trembling, almost dropping the damn thing… I wondered, aloud, to nobody…
Why was this so difficult? Why do I hesitate?
I finally held this in my hands, after so many years, and yet I hesitated to open it. Not that it hadn’t been in my possession, I just hadn’t deigned to peruse the contents, being caught-up in what I had mistakenly called a life…
No, it was more than that. I hadn’t wanted to read it. In all honesty, I didn’t want to flip through the timeworn pages and stumble over the poor, juvenilistic scrawls in a sorry excuse for penmanship. I hadn’t wanted to remind myself of what state I was in so long ago.
As tough as I make myself out to be, as macho as I sometimes act, I was scared to death of my own shadow, literally.
This was the reason for the lock and key. Not to protect the book from any outside observer, although I wouldn’t want anyone else to read this… No, the security in place was to protect myself from memories I no longer wanted. Memories of a simpler time in not only my responsibilities, but also my own mental development.
But that was part of my development, so why should it matter? After all, just as a stream becomes a river, so must our minds follow the natural progression from trickling inkling of thought to the roaring flood of blissful awareness.
Why was this so difficult? Why was I not willing to let myself see the stream?
I slowly began to remember. I forced myself to remember, that while I was not fully aware, I was still myself. The upwelling of emotion, the outpouring that I can’t contain, and yet can’t quite properly channel either; these always will and always have been completely me. My character, my persona, is one of inward discovery, and I was merely a few miles back on that path. While my attempts at converting these emotions into words were laughingly idiotic at best, compared to my current capabilities (which are of little improvement), I still had the indellible urge to explore my own psyche.
That unceasing drive will always be at the core of me, and this I could truly call my own.
After one final moment of Zen-like meditation, I opened the first book to the first page and began to read the first line of my first attempts at emtional conveyence, written in pencil-lead smudged Sanskrit-like scrawl.
Dear Diary…
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