Horcrux
Yesterday, while cleaning out a cupboard, I found an old journal I kept while Reginald and I were together. We were living in separate states at that point, and we agreed to write journals for each other so we could read them when the long-distance ordeal was over. This seemed more romantic than simply keeping in touch via chat and email, I suppose, which we did anyway. We were always looking for the most romantically dramatic way to navigate our relationship, including crying uncontrollably whenever completely unnecessary.
I wrote in mine faithfully a few times a week for about a year and a half. I think he wrote about two or three entries total in his. I remember how that hurt and confused me. Understandable, because it was somewhat telling as to the nature of our dynamic by then, about which I was even more clueless.
I wasn’t a girlfriend at that point; I was a supplicant. I prayed. I mooned. I counted the days between us like a rosary and I’d never even been Catholic. Reginald was my false and golden god. A blond god with floppy hair. I wrote florid fantasies that seemed to long for his pity and love in equal parts. Even if we were to ignore the fact that this man was abusing me emotionally every day, and each time I visited him he’d physically abuse me, everything I wrote was desperate, needy, and absolutely starved for even the meanest scraps of affection. It is frankly disgusting. I’m so glad I never put that shit up on the internet.
I didn’t have much time to devote to reading that old artifact, but I felt a mild nausea flutter through me as I skimmed it. I wanted to reach back through the pages, grasp the wrist of that little girl as she spilled herself across them, and tell her exactly what she was wasting. So many years– her college years, which could have been a fun adventure. So much dignity. Her very self.
And truthfully, she probably wouldn’t have listened to me. She seemed to think that mortgaging everything she was and everything she could be was a small price to pay, when really she just wanted to be loved.
Teenage girls are so pathetic when they’re me. Honestly.
I wrapped the journal in a plastic bag like a thing that stinks and shoved it in the dumpster. Exactly where it belonged all along.
The real loss from our mistakes is not the mistakes themselves – they teach us something, frequently things we could not learn any other way. Some mistakes have to be made in order to move forward with life.
The loss comes in the time, energy, and emotion we spend regretting them.
You could have had better memories, true. But you have better experiences to look forward to as a result of what you have learned.
@Orphan I agree. Sometimes I forget/ignore it, but it’s so true.
Been trying to come up with something better than “I’m so sorry this happened to you!” but basically that’s all I’ve got. Orphan did better.
I’m glad for all the ways we read about you getting/being over this now!
I’m printing this off to give to my 13 year old daughter. She’s amazing, but she still needs to hear stuff like this, from someone like you. My voice is not really one that she hears when the topic is boys, and probably never will be.
Pretty impressive introspection there, Cupie.
@Mousie762 You mentioning you notice I’m getting over this is a pretty awesome comment, I have to say. It made me smile.
@Matt G I’m making up for lost time when it comes to self-awareness, I think.