Box

'There is fiction in between the space between...fiction between you and me' - Tracy Chapman "Telling Stories" 

Opening a box of memories is sometimes like opening an old wound. Probably not recommended. I hadn't touched most of this stuff in 8 years and I thought it was about time. It surely wasn't. It is therapeutic to remind yourself where you came from. I found a fortune cookie which read "The best prophet of the future is the past", in my box of memories in the back of my attic. How oddly appropriate. I found old short stories and poems I wrote in high school which was wonderful remembering all those silly ideas in my young head and realizing how far I'd come . . . and then I found the kicker, the real wound. Things from the most painful chapter of my life. Why I'd decided to keep notes from my first girlfriend I'll never know. But I did, cause I figured one day in my old age I'd want to be reminded that someone truly loved me, and not in that fickle let's fuck kind of love, but that timeless let's grow old together and die kind of love. How real it was I can't remember. Whatever it was it reduced me to a sobbing emotional hemophiliac. And now I'm writing this journal because writing always gave me piece. 

I usually don't cry I usually only cry for maybe 30 minutes at the most. When I was younger I used to cry till it seemed all the fluid came out of my head through my eyes to the point of being woozy. 

Recently I re-met the acquaintance of my birth-grandmother. Something that should have been far more emotional than what it was, we just had dinner and relaxed and told jokes and talked about movies. Notes from an ex-girlfriend you barely remembered, a girl who changed your life but you had trouble remembering what her face looked like seemed like 'well that can't hurt' / 'who knows you might get a laugh and think how silly it all was, with this new perspective of 'life experience and age'. But when you've spent about 13 hours on 1 phone call when you were in college, putting her on speaker to eat lunch from 6am - 10pm is that love or something else? 

I kept the voice message on my phone of a (different) girl I care about in my saved messages so I could hear her voice whenever I felt, I'll see that one soon, I guess I wanted to be prepared if any emotions come up for her. (A little odd keeping the message I know but she has a pleasant voice and it helps keep me calm). Despite my seeming femininity I've always loved women. But despite some decent sex I've never emotionally invested in one after that first time. I had 1 on the hook a few years ago but when we split I cried for 2minutes. When I opened up a box of memories I cried for 4 hours. And if it weren't for me writing this in my notes at 5am now after my body recently launched me awake I'm assuming with too many thoughts in my brain that need to be purged I surely would still be crying and if if wasn't for writing this I'm sure I could cry for another week or so or longer.  

3 months ago I had a dream that this particular girl (the one in my memory box). Her and I were together at my house in California, it was a sex dream I must confess. But I couldn't remember her face, it was like a blur then. And because the 'Facebook' is so interconnected, as is the web, I'd always thought over the past couple of years (since I still keep in touch with some of her friends) and she was on myspace, that her face would pop up . . . and it never has. Not once even in 100's of 'friend's you may know' category. Like she never created an account and she used to be so adept with social media or what that front looked like 8 years ago. But it's refreshing not to see both the face of my dreams and my nightmares so that I can move on and not remember the face of the person when I lost lit a fire so hard underneath me I was determined to move out to California and make a life for myself. To think I never would have the guts to have moved this far away from my home town had it not been for that experience. That said because the memory of opening this box is so recent and I read everything in a rush it should be easy to block these thoughts from my head once I hit California. Concentrating on work has been such an easy distraction. If I found another girl that made me as happy as that (I've come very close believe me) I thought I'd be too afraid to do anything and I'm happy now to know that's not true. 

I think after a first true love it may be impossible to love like that again. But I think adults try and find whatever that second step of adulthood and security is that isn't as passionate but just as banal and nonthreatening kind of love to the psyche to keep them going day by day. 

If there is a heaven I'm sure it'll be like my best moments, with my arms wrapped around her at 2 in the morning staring into her eyes underneath the sheets. 

And if there is a hell I'm sure it'll be like my worst moments like the time I opened a box of memories and 2 1/2 years of memories punched me in the face all at once and like flash-cuts to my psyche I saw every wound she'd slashed on her wrist and every argument we'd ever had and every kiss I'd lost. 

But I am sure now beyond a shadow of a doubt their are neither. And that there are great people waiting for me in my present. And that I shouldn't have been tempted the the hands of a skinny fair haired ghost to go delving into my past, hand by hand to scare the Dicken's out of me. 

If I don't have photographic memory I'm not sure what I have because reading just one note I could remember exactly where I was standing and what the room smelled like. It was frightening more than one can imagine. Over the past 8 years somehow I'm numb to this level of emotionality I guess I remember how painful it is but I forgot how breathtaking it can be. When one love letter from a girl you haven't seen in 8 years is so emotional it causes you to cry so hard your dry-heaving you probably shouldn't have opened that fucking box. One thing about me is I don't have the ability to turn off my emotions. I'm not sure I'd want to, that numb at life feeling has it's own level of fear I don't want to experience again. 

Just wow. I've lived more in the blink of one iris than most human beings get to in their whole lives. And as arrogant as that sounds now I remember that it's also true.

But that's the thing about memories, when years go by and fade them it's hard to believe what's true...but when you open a box that reminds you just how true it really was you can't help but stay just a little wounded like you were back then . . . now a man but in ways still a scared little boy