Baggage
The other night I couldn't sleep. [Not a new thing in my life, as some of you regular readers may know.] However, I knew I was being rather restless and decided to give my husband a break and head downstairs to the spare bedroom.
What to do? What to do? I was too tired to concentrate on watching t.v. But I was too awake to turn off the light and lie there waiting for sleep. So I pulled out an old journal and began to thumb through the pages. There were various articles I had clipped. Some were inspirational. You know the type. "Get -going- and -conquer- the- world" type of articles. Some were about child rearing. There was a few with decorating advice. And there were some journal entries and letters.
I read some of my letters I had never sent. I didn't send them, because they ended up too long and involved. ... in writing them I had basically booo-hoo-hooed my way through, explaining the mess that I was in and the things I wished that I could change and couldn't. I continued reading. After a few more"going-to-the=garden-to-eat-worms" entries I was convinced once and for all that I needed to get rid of them, lest they be discovered post mortem. No one need read through that kind of emotional morass. I know it would not even be close to being interesting. Depressing is more like it. So I went back through the journal and took out pages to burn.
I have done this once or twice before. A few years ago I made the decision to burn my
teenage diaries. No one needs to know...indeed, no one would be the slightest bit interested in those diaries. They were annotated with stimulating entries like whose locker I passed by that day and how they didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to me (again); or entries about my diet. (I shouldn't have complained about my weight back then. .... I had thin ankles). I always fancied that I would be a little like Anne Frank. But diary entries don't have the same fascination for the public as hiding in an attic for several years.
Anyway, as I said, I took the offending pages and ripped them up and put them in the fireplace. I lit a match. I set the match to the papers. They caught fire briefly, then went out. I lit another match. The same thing happened. Finally after 13 matches the only success I could claim was that I smelled like smoke. My big plan to release my decade-old thoughts into the heavens, by way of the fireplace was not working. I decided to go back to bed. I was sure there was a lesson in there about how hard it is to get rid of emotional baggage, but by then, I was too tired to care.
What to do? What to do? I was too tired to concentrate on watching t.v. But I was too awake to turn off the light and lie there waiting for sleep. So I pulled out an old journal and began to thumb through the pages. There were various articles I had clipped. Some were inspirational. You know the type. "Get -going- and -conquer- the- world" type of articles. Some were about child rearing. There was a few with decorating advice. And there were some journal entries and letters.
I read some of my letters I had never sent. I didn't send them, because they ended up too long and involved. ... in writing them I had basically booo-hoo-hooed my way through, explaining the mess that I was in and the things I wished that I could change and couldn't. I continued reading. After a few more"going-to-the=garden-to-eat-worms" entries I was convinced once and for all that I needed to get rid of them, lest they be discovered post mortem. No one need read through that kind of emotional morass. I know it would not even be close to being interesting. Depressing is more like it. So I went back through the journal and took out pages to burn.
I have done this once or twice before. A few years ago I made the decision to burn my
teenage diaries. No one needs to know...indeed, no one would be the slightest bit interested in those diaries. They were annotated with stimulating entries like whose locker I passed by that day and how they didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to me (again); or entries about my diet. (I shouldn't have complained about my weight back then. .... I had thin ankles). I always fancied that I would be a little like Anne Frank. But diary entries don't have the same fascination for the public as hiding in an attic for several years.
Anyway, as I said, I took the offending pages and ripped them up and put them in the fireplace. I lit a match. I set the match to the papers. They caught fire briefly, then went out. I lit another match. The same thing happened. Finally after 13 matches the only success I could claim was that I smelled like smoke. My big plan to release my decade-old thoughts into the heavens, by way of the fireplace was not working. I decided to go back to bed. I was sure there was a lesson in there about how hard it is to get rid of emotional baggage, but by then, I was too tired to care.
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