revisiting

I've been at home with my parents for the last week, in L.A. It has been, essentially, a film festival -- I think we've watched 5 or 6 (or maybe 7) videos, plus a few on cable late at night by myself (including "But I'm a Cheerleader," and boy oh boy did Clea Duvall's andro to Natasha Lyonne's femme give me a scandalous little shiver there in my parent's den). I've been sleeping hours upon hours every night, reading the paper all morning. My mom bought me a pink shirt today after we went for Japanese food. I made some fantastic latkes the other night -- Susie Bright has a recipe blog, did you know that? It's called "Suzie the Homebreaker" and I highly recommend her latke recipe.

Another thing I've been doing is sorting through all my old journals and letters. They're all still here, in the drawers of my childhood desk. I seem to have saved absolutely everything -- every note ever passed my way in pre-calculus, every errant scribbling of mine from my teens and early twenties. Paging through it all, I'm struck mainly by the state of deathly insecurity in which I have spent so many years of my life. My college scrawlings oscillate between a fear so pervasive I was almost paralyzed, and hope for a stronger self to emerge.

It is amazing to read, and so sad, too -- I grieve all of that lost time. What was I so afraid of? Why was I so full of condemnation for myself, for my every move? What's excellent, I guess, is being able to see it all in retrospect, and to see how far I've travelled since those years. But the feelings then were mostly along the scalp-tingling fear spectrum -- fearing the worst in terms of my personality, my loveability, my capacity to succeed in the world. I remember, both from reading my diary entries and from all the associated images that have come rushing back, how I would end up so many days and nights cowering away from the specter of my own terribleness. No high could erase that creeping dread.

I wish I could go back and talk to my trapped, tormented 21-year-old self. I wish I could tell her to loosen her grip a little bit; that she really is smart and talented enough to be at that big school with all those math-smart people; that it's okay to feel attracted to other girls. I wish I could somehow transmit to her that she is a precious light, a vital player in the community of life, beloved on this earth. She didn't know any of that then, but life was calling to her, however faintly it echoed in the darkness, and I wish I could have held her shoulders and whispered in her ear to listen, listen.

As I said, though, it has me marvelling at the journey. We are space travellers but we are also always reaching deeper in, brushing back the dust and debris from the essential qualities that glow through time. It is beautiful, to have a record of all my yearnings, because through it there runs a line, a thread, a vein of gold. I saw it back then, as bleak as I felt, and I wrote about it. And now I am running alongside it, faster and faster, flying along on the dream that this thin strand will take me to my place, take me home.