Journals

I was laying in bed this am, trying to wake up yet trying my hardest to stay sleepy enough to lounge in that dream state where your mind wanders without too many interruptions. As I lay there, I got to thinking about all the journals I've filled with scribblings over the years-- and where the hell were they, anyway? Because if those little books, dripping with embarassing, awkward moments and mostly complaining about my husband and children (the last 15 years, anyway) were to surface without the opportunity to do some 'splaining, it could get me in trouble, tee hee.
I've been journalling (pre-blogging?) since I was a kid; I always felt I had something to say of significance, stuff I couldn't find anyone to tell who couldn't suppress their snickers well enough to protect my developing ego (and thoughts of great profundity that the intellects of the common man *surely* couldn't grasp. Snort.).
I remember one of my first entries, probably when I was about 12 years old: It was my first attempt at writing my "New Year's Resolutions", and I was slooooowly beginning to realize that I was a hopeless geek, and tragically fashionably stunted (some things never change..). I also began to discover that I was, shall we say, a chubbo-- so my very first entry had to do with getting in shape and learning to breakdance, something to that effect. Unfortunately, I was still in the throes of my "Classical" period (I was hopelessly addicted to my "Hooked on Classics" cassette), and the moonwalk just wasn't coming together for me, so I can count it as the official first of many unrequited skills I wished to develop.
Shortly after that period, I discovered how powerful the written word was, when I started writing down everything I ate: "one apple, one oreo" (all day). At 12, and 5'4', I went from 120 pounds to 73 pounds in just a few short months. Control, control, control-- I was a control freak from an early age. Now, of course, I lack self control...I must have used up my lifetime supply at an early age.
I also, now that I think about it, kept a small notebook filled with mysterious words I found in the dictionary that I could use to insult people without their knowledge... a tad bit "banal" and "insipid", but cool (yes, I was a shit)!
And later, there were the notebooks filled with drawings and awful, angst ridden poems about death and how much I hated school, cheerleaders, school mascots and such; stuff that probably would have landed me on the Adolescent Unit or juvie if it was post-Columbine instead of the '80's, where teens only fantasized about "taking out" their classmates (even if "taking out" meant for me that I could yell and scream at my nemeses while lodging a coherent, uninterrupted rant about what jerks I thought they were...Life was simpler then.).
I wrote a lot in college, mostly beautifully eloquent philosophical ramblings I penned when I was supposed to be paying attention in class, where I ultimately deducted that life was all an illusion, blablabla. (Drugs were waaaay too readily available at my "Ivy League of the Midwest" college, where you could suspend academic probation indefinitely if your parents paid full tuition). This viewpoint was probably how I ended up shifting from the "creepy death and blackness" phase of my adolescence into the "wandering hippie" moment that was to define my young adulthood.
More later: