"I could’ve gone out to the drive-in, out with Dave somewhere or maybe out with Dean somewhere tonight, and here I am at home. I could’ve asked someone to go to Mac and Don’s with me, but I walked by myself. I can’t see if it’s from habit or by choice. I so many times say it’s by choice automatically. It is, but I should realize that." - September 4th, 1977
Culled from my journal nearly 28 years ago. I'll spare the reader, and the author, much of the adolescent wailing and whining that fills some of those pages. I'm trolling for any deepness and truth that I might have stumbled upon during my better days. And I did seem to have a few of them, more than I remember. Growing up in a small midwestern town, tendencies of introversion, and big-world-out-there sensibilities that were discovered while traveling the summer before my senior year in high school - a triumverate of contrast that made staying true to myself, well, difficult. Can I get an amen?
I'm thinking the life story this young woman chose to record in the stack of notebooks I've lugged around the world all these years has some wisdom for me. I'm willing to hear it now, to celebrate the choices she made and the coping mechanisms she constructed to get me here, safely and sanely. If in that reflecting there is something of value for others, so much the better. I think I always intended it that way, even when the ink was fresh on those pages.
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