"I have to think of something before I die."

That's the first sentence of my first Little Notebook. Summer, 1995.

So many things turned around that summer ten years ago, starting with the most important: I met my shrink, Judith, the person who would save my life. Within weeks of working with her, I had dumped a terrible boyfriend and a worse best friend, told my mom I couldn't be available to her twice a month any more, quit my lifelong habit of sucking my thumb after twenty-five shame-filled years, and started keeping a Little Notebook, in which I decided to write only the truth.

Cleaning out the closets this weekend, I found three boxes of little notebooks from the past ten years. Here's the first entry of the first one:

I have to think of something before I die. I want to do the one good thing against futility. Today I could give up wanting. Buddhism and nihilism. Que sera, sera.

Forget it, I give up giving up. I'm always wanting something. Satisfaction is death. Maybe I'm afraid if I'm ever happy, something will go terribly wrong. I'm afraid none of this is original. I'm afraid nothing I do will even be important. Parks full of bodies, all dead.

Why have I always worried so much about death and meaning. I feel like I was a very smart child. I wish I had been given the opportunity to be great from an early age. What is great. Most everything is such crap, and the more popular it is the more meaningless crap it is.

I want to be important in a whole new way. Having nothing to do with recognition or ego. What is a good way to help people. What motivates politics. People are so ugly and their motives are so perverse. Not that I have anything against perversity per se I just think people don't know what they want.

I want to foster love and understanding. What a marshmallow platitude. I'm always putting myself down for no reason. There's nothing wrong with wanting good things for anonymous people, being more specific is probably a start. Can you only help individuals? Of course, very basic.

I'm in Washington Square Park wishing I could write a poem, the poem that would help. Poetry doesn't help, money helps. I know I don't believe that. What to do. Observe, observe, observe.

It is my new mission to lay back and observe. Put less of myself out there and listen more. Most of it is such garbage and nonsense. I'm not looking for somebody to bounce my anecdotes off, I don't want to sit around a trade compliments. I want a real lover and I'm prepared to wait.

Well, maybe not prepared, but now's the time. Now is the time to be alone. I bet I thrive. Intentions aren't enough but they're a good place to begin. Stop putting myself down. Stop abusing myself. Stop being afraid. Everything will be all right.

Comments

[Emilie]

Thanks for sharing that. A lot of wisdom there. And beautifully and purely worded.

[girlbomb]

Thanks for reading it. I know it's a little self-indulgent to post old journals, but I was struck by how much they remind me of exactly what I'm thinking these days.

[megan]

remember when i told you about how i thought that poetry was a connection, the poem you know you could have written, the from my head to your mouth thing? that's how this made me feel.