Dear Diary
I know this isn’t a good way to start a new Diary, but I had an awful day.
And so began my old Journal from the period Oct.8.1986 – Oct.23.1993. In ’86 I was at BealArt. I was trying to be “all that, and a bag a chips”. ;-)
This journal is full of all the loves found, lost, picked up and scattered to the four winds. It was a time of artsy farting around, party all the time, and A-HA. At 19 I had moved out with my girlfriend Clare and broke my Parents heart – good grief you know Dad still acts like I ripped a “pound of flesh” off him to this day.
I had finished BealArt, gone briefly to college for Photography, hated it so I quit and pissed my Mom off BIG TIME. Dad by than had completely given up I think on expecting anything from me. Than to really get the old girl spinning I went on welfare and found a job part-time at a Portrait Studio. Like fluff in the breeze, flitting here and there, and pining for my love, any love at all.
POEM DATE: April 15/87
Everytime I think of him,
the person that’s not there.
I miss the touch that I can’t feel.
When I listen to that song,
the one that I can’t hear,
that song that could be ours.
When I can’t be with
the one that’s not there.
When I dream of loves that exist,
I miss the ones that don’t.
God that makes me cringe. Blah. Over the holidays my sister and I had a blow out in the bathroom at 1AM, for old times sake I guess. Whew…I said things, she said things, all of which stems back to me quitting college, moving out, and basically doing everything wrong I guess. “So much potential, wasted”… that’s the popular refrain during these blow outs between my sweet sis and I. I told her she can call it what ever she likes, I call it getting a life.
Still looking for that I suppose, how many years later? So I guess this is my life, seeking soul, beauty and moments. Now maybe I’m finally learning how to share. And Lex and I are all good. Just her saying what only your sibling can, since she knows all the secrets, all the stories that I know…just from a different angle. It was time for me to really make it clear that …
“I was fine, I would be ok, and to blawdy back the H E double-hockey sticks up and mind your own business, sister o’mine. YOU are not responsible for me, I am. You are merely my loving sister. Capiche? “
So back in the mists of time, that first apartment featured moldy bread green couches atop shag carpets of same. I slept in one of 2 antique twin beds that were Moms, Clare in the other. To give you an extra special visual….I once found my cat doing the bum-watoosie trying to get a condom unstuck from his rear. Nice. His name was Yaran, which I found somewhere that said it meant Cat in Aborigine. I had danced myself all the way to the otherside of the earth, Australia, and I had the world by the tail. From the time I first stepped off the plane, till I left 3 weeks later, I felt like I had come home. Perhaps I was; maybe in another life.
Breath of an unseen stranger,
lingering in the mist.
Cast an ominous shadow,
upon the land of this.
Careful steps,
the silent walk.
Breathing inward bliss.
and southern light can stir and calm the mist
It is in this book I see my “Dear Diary” morph into Journal. Amongst all this smarmy hoogly-moogly I was growing up. Where on those first pages I speak to that anonymous “Diary”, by August 8th 1988 I just plow right into it with …
Lot’s happened since I last wrote in this book. Things are changing, stuff is being brought up. Where slowly coming towards an end into a new beginning. Dom, M & Clare and I feel we’ve been chosen for something. Although we’re not sure what, we know it is going to change, or just open us up, to “things”. That’s the only way I can describe it, as “things”, I have alot of work though before that; we all do. I don’t know where to start.
On the next page, at the top I wrote …
“Met R (my ex-husband) October of 1988, week before Halloween”.
February 3 1989
Dear Whomever,Been a while since I last wrote in this book, or any book. I met a wonderful, wonderful person -R. I met him through K, Clare’s new Beau. Things have progressed and here I am, in two weeks or less ready to move in with him. I love him very much, he’s everything to me, and alot more. I’ve waited a long time for someone like him, I can’t see the future, nor do I want to because right now is what’s important, and right now is what important to me and were I want to be. I love you R.
By January of 1993 in the second semester of “Library and Information Technician” at Fanshawe – I had been married 2 1/2 years.
When I was young, grade one, I was diagnosed with a Learning Disability. It was a label that haunted me throughout my education. I hated it. I hated feeling that my being different made me less somehow. Mom tried to put a spin on it, but I could see that she was upset that I wasn’t her brilliant little genius. My problem has always been auditory, I find it difficult to grasp, hold and process information as it’s spoken. I need to write it down, organize it and than its clear. Over the years I have learned not to overcome it, but to embrace it as something unique to me. My style of learning is related to what makes me uniquely me. I am not a automaton and just didn’t fit into the tidy little educational system available to me in my little rural school system at the time. If it had not been for my Aunt Penny, who was a Special Education teacher, I would have suffered alot more than I did. She spent hours after school with me when I was young…funny enough, I don’t remember any of it at all. She told me once that means she did her job well. Thank you Penny.
Sunday, January 17th, 1993
I think for the first time I “get” what Mom kept telling me, that I’m not only intelligent, but that my IQ puts me a little above average. There are times that it bewilders me why my fellow classmates can’t understand what to me seems vividly obvious. It’s extraordinary to know that concepts that are new to me, are also within my grasp. I can now, after so long of being labeled, realize my intellectual power and it is soooo satisfying.
by PaulaB 
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