this is the story of my life: Proof of my Failure.

 i guess this year would be something of an anniversary for me, 10 years of this diary. i read back and forward and it’s funny cause i still can’t remember, but i was there and i felt it and i know it because i wrote it. if there was ever a need for me to sum up my life, it’s all here in black and white, the progression and regression, the most important things to me, at the time, at some time. my most vulnerable side that i was never afraid to admit being weak and sad and lonely. it’s obvious how i saw the world through a child’s eyes, when i still saw hope and when i believed i’d be someone, someday. "i used to be somebody". i had really thought that there was nothing but a world full of possibilities out there for a girl like me, that all i had to do was wait out the teen years and i would finally be free. that i could let go of what came before and one day just start living life, i mean really living life. i had always believed it was just a matter of time until i got what i wanted or what i deserved, got something that would make me different, happy. suffer a little longer, i’d tell myself, the best is yet to come. and that’s what saddens me all these years later. to have a visual of a little girl’s dream lost, to be able to read through and know exactly where that suzy had gone wrong. like when you are watching a scary movie and the victim is about to open the door for the murderer and you just want to yell, to warn them, you’re going to die! a part of me wishes i could go and change the endings, bring out that little glimmer of hope a little bit more, stop being the pessimist for once, and maybe everything else would have changed with it.

i’d constantly saw .blatantly trite. as my treasure, like a photo album, a memoir, a home movie. but the more i think about it the more i see it for what it really is. proof of my demise, proof of my decline, proof that it all really happened and i can’t get it back. right here, in black and white. what started out so innocently, the strongest thing-the words, the thought that every lost love would cause my life to end, a fight with a friend would put me over the edge, slowly but sure-fully became something so very real. so serious. because it was life. my life. there’s no more "hang in there a little longer, it’s all downhill from here", no more waiting for  real life to start. because at some point it had  and now it is half way over. it was okay, back then, to be waiting for the next big thing, the chance to spread my wings, to actually believe i was capable of anything i put my mind to, to believe pen to paper might get me somewhere. now i am sad for that girl and her ignorance, her naivety. what a comforting world i must have lived in for that time when the world was my oyster. where did i get off believing that running away from pain could still bring me to some successful future? how many mistakes did i believe i could make and still think i had a chance? its so easy when you are young.. you think.. ‘i love writing, people say i’m good, that’s how i will support myself for the rest of my life and i will be happy and fulfilled’. the lack of any kind of truth in that statement was always how i made myself feel better for dropping out of college. ‘even if i had graduated, where would a creative writing degree get me anyway? if i’m really that good than i don’t need a diploma!‘. it’s funny because back then i rarely suffered from writer’s block that has quickly taken over my life the past few years and my answer is always the same, ‘what do i write about when nothing different happens? i’ve said it all before.’ 

‘i used to narrate my life in my head’.

you can see where i lost my drive, my creativity, my belief that something good was still out there for me. you can see where i slowly started losing faith in myself and hope in my future. it’s like two different people coming through on these pages. i guess i am two different people. child, woman. writer, mother. and those two different people could never co-exist in the same real world. i can’t lie to myself now even if i wanted to, even if my life depended on it. i’m jaded. a shell of my former self. the real world has broken me, and i let it. it’s no one’s fault but my own.

so maybe this isn’t the treasure i always thought of it as. the thing i could be proud of when i didn’t feel i had anything else. but it still is my life, my story. it shows all of me, it shows how quickly it all can change. raw, vulnerable, miserable, stupid, naive.

even if it turns out to be a tragedy.