Letters from NYC

Dear Diary

When I was in 1st grade I had a difficult time coping with my new school environment. It had been my father’s 3rd relocation to a new parish, which meant that it was our 3rd move that year.

We were in the foothills of the Andean mountains one day, and the next found ourselves in the hot dusty plains of Southern Italy. I barely had been given enough time to adjust to the time change, let alone understand the language, when I was enrolled and sent off to a new school. It was then that I found you. You gave me a safe place and an open space where I could pour out all my struggles and feelings, and express myself without being told that I had to be more stoic or more grateful for all the things I had.

Through your steady and ever present companionship you became my friend, confidante and confessor all rolled into one. As my friend, you listened attentively and contemplatively without being critical. You were patient in accepting self-indulgent and selfish thoughts that were sometimes repeated ‘ad nauseam’ and without variation.

As my confidante, you secretly and quietly accepted all of my secrets and those of my friends, without once betraying my heart or revealing their source. As such, you became a faithful guardian of everything I held near and dear to me. There was an unbroken trust and a close bond between us that I could always rely on, even when others let me down.

As my confessor, you were open to receive all my confessions and recriminations without judgment. You purposely created a quiet sanctuary, enabling me to confess, become penitent and reform in time to learn from my mistakes. The reformation of my soul occurred as a direct result of having an environment where reflection within your pages was the key to my transformation.

As I grew and began to aspire to write, you became a midwife to my ideas. One that let my words take shape on your pages, helped then learn to walk and later take flight so they could wind up as pulsating pixels on a digital page.

Oftentimes, as a scared and confused little girl, that was often overwhelmed by the world around her, you were the only safe port in the sea of chaos that surrounded me. You were always there to comfort and subdue my spirit in times of turmoil. Shortly before we left New York, you recorded my emotions when I saw my classmates’ home burn and collapse with them trapped inside. Although the horror of that day is still with me, the fear and pain are gone as a result of sharing it with you.

You also recorded the crime of passion I witnessed between a husband and his wife, shortly after we had arrived in Lima. It was your pages which helped me first record the truth so I would not forget, and later helped me find my courage, to testify and seek justice for the victim, his deceased wife.

You watched me fall in lust and in love time and again, helping me learn from my mistakes so that I would only make new and different ones the next time. You helped me practice to express and declare my feelings of love through poetry and lyrics. You also recorded their joyous reception and the gentle rebuffs. You were also there during the healing periods, using my own words to reassure me that I would love again.

You recorded my near death experience and the strange recovery that followed at age 12. You were steadfast and faithfully documented my recovery from cancer, when everyone I knew had disappeared, having predicted and anticipated my death.

You helped me explore the role of being a wife and the true meaning of marriage, even when I recorded the suspicions of my husband’s infidelity. You helped me define my role as a mother, and later how that role would change when my husband could not handle the pressures and commitment of being a husband and father.

I learned, through your own quiet strength, what strength was when the most important people in my life were taken from me. In spite of the chasm experienced by my soul, I was willing to go on because at least I had one repository left to seek refuge in, you.

In essence, you have been my best friend and constant companion through out my life. You have been the glue that have held me together through my loneliness and aloneness during all my challenges and joyous moment in my life.

This past year has been one of incredible growth and creativity, in which you were pivotal, as germination ground for my thoughts and all of my poetry. As my canvas, you enabled the formation of art and became both my sounding board and best critic, with a devotion that has yet to be paralleled.

That was until today, when while fussing with my son I left all 3 of you behind. Many people will not understand what a loss you are to me. Only those who have kept journals throughout their lives will be able to understand what you are to me, what you have meant, and how important you’ve become to me, especially since 9/11.

I can’t help but keep repeating that I lost you, each and every one of you. All 3 of you. The journal I used for the last 3 years, to record the wonderful growth experiences of my son and those of me as a mother, gone. The journal, that I had written most for the last 6 months, where I began to record what is what like to come out of an abyss of isolation and begin to make a solid, true and long lasting friendship. It was there that I recorded the emotional roadmap of what it was like to open up slowly and to learn to believe and trust once again. It was there that I recorded my fears, doubts and misgivings, and all the things I was yet unable to share with a new best friend and confidante.

Finally, gone too was the journal that channeled and fostered all my creativity and emotions for the last 15 months. Who experienced the greatest high’s and the lowest lows as I emerged as a woman and writer. It was the centerpiece in the triptych of my soul. All of them are now gone forever.

Also gone was the nice new expensive one I had just bought at Barnes and Noble. I had been searching out for weeks for the right journal book that would be the continuation of that centerpiece jewel. It was more than just the right journal, for the first time I had found the perfect journal. A leather cover and binding that was embossed with faint words and an archer's arrow, signifying the elusive attempt for all writers to hit the mark with the right words. It was a journal I was excited to begin writing in, and did so while drinking my tea and sitting in the café this afternoon. Now it is gone too.

I’m angry as hell with myself for having all of you together in the plastic bag I was carrying in my hand rather than in my back pack. I’m sad that my best friends for the past several years are gone forever. You have been both my mirror and my anchor during a time when normal people went mad, committed suicide or simply had nervous breakdowns at my job. You were there when I was in too much pain to blog and picked up the slack as if my slowing down had not affected you.

You have been there through out the darkest and most recently, throughout the brightest of times. I’m sorry I lost you and know that I will miss you forever.

Posted by Michele at May 6, 2005 12:05 AM