23 October 2012

Unme

Sunday, October 1, 1995 6:25am

I just destroyed six years of my life.  I threw out over 300 pages of journal entries.  Nothing dramatic about it, no ceremonial burning or burying. I simply took the pages out of their binders, carried them to the dumpster, and watched them rearrange themselves into a meaningless paper carpet, a cage-liner for the waste of the rest of the neighborhood.

Sure, I had skimmed it all before throwing it out, a slide-show of crushes I had held in secret, movies at which I had laughed, trivial grudges I let fester within-- the predominance of my high school and undergrad careers.  Sure, afterwards, a tinge of sadness returned only by the silent, chill air. But, regret it? Never.

I am dead to the old life. There is no returning. Now there is no physical evidence of it ever having existed.  There are only memories, and memories fade, a natural process.  The collection and entrapment of them is unnatural.  How silly to carry ten volumes of unme around from house to apartment to apartment to apartment to house in some futile attempt to keep myself. I will never be found within a three-ring binder.

So, perhaps, these words, too, will one day line a trash can. I only know that, now, they represent me to the best of my vain knowledge.  When I learn myself enough to know that they are unme, I will rid myself of them.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am led to this journal entry at the intersection of two trains of current thought. First, while I am in the process of losing my online self, I realize I have shed analytical attachments before. Second, while a certain presidential candidate might purport to have binders full of women, I, from experience, know that a binder can never truly hold a self.