(Full disclosure: this entire post may just be an excuse to use the word “verlegenheit” in a sentence. It means “embarrassment” in German and I have no idea how to pronounce it, but seriously think it may now be one of my favorite words of all time.)
So I spent this morning packing the attic, because my daughter ate the end of my computer charger*. Which brought my workday to a halt until I was able to find a RadioShack (yes, a RadioShack) willing to sell me a way-out-of-date MacBook charger for the bargain price of NINETY DOLLARS. Let’s just let that one go, shall we?
Back to the packing. In our attic we have these built-in storage shelves that go wayyyy back into the house, and are thus the repository for things that we use so infrequently that we completely forget they exist until we unearth them during the course of a move (very useful stuff, as I’m sure you can imagine). And while going through one of these storage shelves I found them:
My old diaries.
Some of them are sweet – little flower doodled six-year-old ramblings about how Katie was mean and Brandon is cute and such – but some? Oh, some bring on the verlegenheit. Big time. When I read the things that came out of the brain of my seventeen-year-old self…I mean, I know the boy craziness and self obsession and drama aren’t especially out of the ordinary for a teenager, but OY do I ever want to shake that girl and tell her to buck up, get over it, and for god’s sake please don’t write down…you know, intimate details…for posterity. PLEASE.
Pleeeeeease.
I want to tell her this not because it’s such a bad thing to write about whatever it is that you’re going through in any way you want to write about it – especially in a spot as theoretically private as a diary – but because her decision to fill books and books with stories that I’m full-on mortified to revisit has left Present Day Me in a bit of a conundrum.
Because as much as I don’t want to re-read these teenage diaries, you know who I want to read them far, far less?
Child One and Child Two.
Never ever everrrrr.
And you know what children are really, really good at? Finding things that you never ever everrrrr want them to see. (I know this from personal experience; sorry Mom.) But it seems so bizarre to just toss a diary, of all things, into the trash – especially one that meant so much to you during the period when you were writing it. Doesn’t it?
Except there’s this: Awhile ago I went through my albums and came across a whole bunch of photographs that all of a sudden struck me as images that I wanted to get rid of. I told Kendrick this, and he was horrified – he’s very emotional about his stuff, and it takes a lot for him to want to get rid of something that he used to love – but to me, having them in my life just didn’t feel right anymore. These photos weren’t of anything that was an especially big deal, just photos of me kissing an ex-boyfriend, or smoking a cigarette, or whatever…but I sat with them for awhile and finally realized, you know, as much as those moments were a part of my past, they’re not things that my children need to see. And who else am I keeping them for, really? These things that happened are a part of me whether I want them to be or not, and it’s not the physical reminder that’s what’s important…it’s the experience itself (and hopefully what I learned from it).
I tried to think of something good that could come from holding onto them, and I couldn’t. And so I took one last look, tucked the memories away in my mind, and and then let the images themselves go. I expected to regret it, but I didn’t. It felt like it set me free, in a way.
So tell me honestly – what does one do with something like teenage diaries? Bury ’em, toss ’em, frame ’em, throw ’em in a fire? I have no idea, and now is as good of a time as any to make a decision.
*A saliva-on-charger destruction, not an ingestion-type one. She’s fine. The charger, not so much.
