The Diaries – Part Deux

Aren’t most teenaged angst diaries supposed to be filled with lovelorn, treacly drivel?

Constant jealousy amongst friends, puppy love?

Dramatic makeups and breakups from one day to the next?

Aren’t these diaries supposed to be cringe-worthy musings from she who didn’t yet know true heartache?

Shouldn’t they be about boring school stuff? Boring parents? Feeling totally misunderstood?

Then we read the diaries a half century later and we chuckle at our naïveté? Laughing at our ridiculous drama of what was, at the time, just puberty and hormones?

Shouldn’t reading them now be fun and funny? Hilarious even, in our immature notion that we were so sophisticated? That our parents were the hopeless naiveté’s?

Shouldn’t it be just a gas to reach back in time and find our long-promised-best-friends-for-life and giggle hysterically just like we did then?

Then why, oh why, am I transported back into so much pain? Why am I putting myself through this? Do I really think it will help to heal me as I continue to spiral into despair? Am I that desperate?

Some came out unscathed; others either died young or wish they had. Like me.

We were a MESS back then and things didn’t improve for many of us.

Those of us who survived, some did okay, I suppose. Others, like myself, suffer to this day.

These diaries…….

Why can I only read a few month’s worth at a time?

Afterwards, I come out of a fugue state of abject depression and just want to throw myself off a cliff.

After several days of recovery, I dive back in. Because I must.

If I’d known now what I knew then, there would be no now. And God help me, there’s more to come.

Stay tuned……