*Although I write in the first person narrative, part of these writings are from thoughts other people and I have shared, based on similar experiences that I could relate to... to 'experience mentally and emotionally', as actors do. Being a writer, I guess I have a way of putting things that helps to convey thoughts better than some others have... so I've been told, now and then, through the years,... Therefore this is to give them a voice, as well as myself, and to bring the fragments together in a story that has a continuity which is easier to follow ... I think there are some points here that are worth thinking about... Maybe even more than once... RLR
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* I suppose everyone has their own kind of rituals ... in addition to whatever ones they have in regards to their particular religion... and one of mine was taking bad feelings or thoughts and throwing them down the drain, or toilet, and washing them out, out , out to sea, to be removed, purified, in the salt water of the oceans of the world. In comparison, it made me realize, too, how petty my negative feelings were, in relation to all the beauty of the world, the land, the oceans, and all on and in them. It made me think of how much bigger all creation was, in comparison to our planet, and all the stars in the sky that I could see. No matter how big and real my problems were, or are, although they must be delt with, and not to be sluffed off, as if they do not exist, it helped me to get a better perspective on things when I took the time to ponder this, even for a few minutes... while washing my hands. This is one I still use from time to time.
* Some people keep "diaries". As a teenager, I remembered hearing of how someone's diary had been found when they had died, and sometimes my life seemed so uneventful that I would make it seem more exciting by adding things that were not really accurate. To me a diary was more like a storybook. I didn't really think of them as being intended to record my real life. They were in the form of a little book. They usually came with a key so you could lock them. It made them seem all the more like something for an adventure ... and not just to record the daily life which everyone I knew already knew about. They weren't in the form of some TO DO list or something. They were little books with blank pages and lines ... for writing a story in.
But I remember an instance where someone had read one of them, and how they confronted me about things they read in it. They said they believed it to be true, because it being a diary, I must have felt it was my secret journal ... hiding truths but writing about them as if to make a record of my secret life... of things I did or that happened that I didn't want anyone else to know. ( They were sorely amiss. )
But they were private, personal not because they were deep, dark secrets, but because they were NOT true, or at least not really accurate. My fantasy world, more or less ... and usually not even a one that I necessarily wanted, but it was fun to read about ... something I wrote about someone who was me but not me.
I had started out just jotting a line or two without any explanation. But over time, I began to write a paragraph or two. Sometimes I'd say I had a date with this or that person and how they KISSED me. Sometimes I wrote something as if it was a love story, but really it was just the love of one friend for another... and not romantic. Other times it was the WHAT IF kind of story where a boy I knew and I pretended WHAT IF WE GOT MARRIED SOME DAY? Which might well have been telling the truth, but what we had talked about was a story. Playing pretend. It was just a scenario ... Trying to see how it would feel ... to learn something about one another, and ourselves.
They rarely went beyond such simple things that kids today would have to laugh at their innocence... but to me they were things you didn't just go tell someone about. You wrote these ... as stories. If you went out and said you did this and that, and your friends knew it wasn't so, because you were with them, and you all played kickball all afternoon ( although, yes, during a break you and so and so DID sit on the stone wall and share a soda ) they'd laugh and call you a LIAR or a storyteller with a wild imagination, but not intending it as a compliment.
But WRITING such things WAS telling a story. The actual truth would have been we had been sitting on the wall, side by side, sharing a soda, and left smiling at one another saying we had a nice talk and a fun afternoon, and let's do it again sometime, and that was IT. If anyone were to read it at some point in the future, when what was written there didn't really affect anyone, how boring that would be! ( Furthermore, I believed that others would respect this as my personal property, so I saw no real need to keep it locked, and didn't really think anyone who knew me at all would believe half the things that were in them. If by some chance, someone DID read them, they would likely laugh, and tease me, and I'd be embarrassed, but that would be IT... so I thought... )
I rarely went on actual "dates"... but I knew that other people did, so if I was going to write a story, I'd put something in that might sound more expected of me, something "normal "... and something a lot of others would relate to. This was to be THE STORY of my life... Strange as it may seem, that's what I thought a diary was for. It had that kind of "theatrical air" about it... the little book, gilted edges on the pages, the lock and key.. .though I, generally, kept the key WITH the book... so how secretive was I really trying to be? It was a kind of an adventure just to have it and write embellished stories in it. Like a legend it contained SOME truth so in that sence it was a personal journal, too.
Well, during the aforementioned confrontation, I said that if I didn't want anyone to know why would I ever put them into writing? If they were truly deep, dark secrets, I would remember them and that would be enough. I said that I wanted people in the future to hear exciting tales, and not read about the ins and outs of my daily life, which either sounded boring, or miserable, or something less than interesting as far as I was concerned. After all, I was a teenager. But, usually, I didn't even write much in them. ( Ah HA, I must have been being cryptic! ) Often times there were a number of empty pages, since each page had a date at the top of it, and if I didn't have anything to say that day, I didn't write in it. They were those little ones with barely enough space for a paragraph ... so I'd just write a couple of lines... which probably left a lot to the imagination, which could be read into without much trouble ... but in fact there was nothing there ... even less than was actually IN them.
I kept them, because to me they were something of myself ... rather like some people keep cards and letters. ( Well, I did that too ... still have a lot of them, in fact ... and if anyone read the responses from my friends to things I had written in letters to them, they could easily have put two and two together, seeing that something was amiss. They were really my memoirs, even if not an autobiography. ) I'd look back on these diaries now and then and have to laugh. They were so simple. I was so young...
Sad to say, later on, I found that another one had been read by someone who seemed to take it as having been REAL... "the truth". Here were secrets about my life that I hadn't told! "You had a boyfriend that you saw every day that whole summer by the looks of this! " ( Well actually I had wished I did! ) But did it really matter? SIGH... Apparently, it did... because I had told him how my life had really been, but when he found this sitting on the table in the livingroom, he took it to be something I accidently left there, probably looking back remembering him and still dreaming about him... and if that was the real truth and everything else was a lie... and THIS MUST be the truth because it was in a diary!
Never mind that it wasn't locked at the time... because, you see, as HE TOLD ME, I had accidently left it there... having been reading it when noone was around. Then he came over, and when I hastened to answer the door, I lept up forgetting it ... Horrible me ... the truth had outed ... but then again, no, it never really did ... because he didn't listen, and that was that...but in the long-run, probably for the better ...
* In later years, I liked to write stories, or at least I tried to, inbetween this and that, as often as I could. They were, in part, based on things in my life, that of others I knew, or things I had heard about, and laced with imagination to bring them all together. Usually they became boxes of papers filled with partial manuscripts and many ideas , which I'd shove under the bed. Under the bed NOT because they were a secret to kept hidden... but because they were out of the way... until the evening, usually, when I had time to pull them out again, if I wasn't to tired to do so.
Unfortunately, they too were treated with suspicion, and finally I was confronted about them! Well, sometimes, until you can think of names you really want to use, you use the names of people you know to play certain parts ... sometimes it's not hard to see them playing that role, but other times not ... but in any case, I was accused of writing slanderous things about this person. I must not have wanted them to know what I had written because they were hidden under the bed ... hidden under the bed ... that being something akin to a vault at the bank, apparently... again, I SIGH. Of course, this person knew I was a writer, but obviously knew nothing about how a writer processes things.
My questions would be> Why did you go looking under my bed in the first place?, and when you came upon these things I had written, why did you not tell me you had done so? When did you find the time to pick some of them out, and how did you get out of the house with them???!
Sometimes I had had the feeling that someone had been going through them as some pages seemed to be missing, but then again who, and when, and why?
Apparently MY suspicions were true, but based on the fact that I noticed that pages, ones I was quite sure I had put in a certain order, were out of place now... but since I hadn't always numbered them, I was never quite sure... until I was confronted... and that was the mutual end of another relationship.
* I, also, used to write things down... things other people said or did that were disturbing to me, and things that happened to me, and I'd burn them. Because they were as real things in this world, I made these notes on a piece of paper ( many times in a looseleaf notebook that I also used to record appointments, grocery lists, things that needed repair, when library books were due back, and assorted other things ) I wrote them down on paper as a record of them from this world being sent back to the UNIVERSE for purifying.
I often wrote them just as others had said them to ME. For instance: JOEY IS A TOTAL GEEK. When writing this which only I was going to read, why would I add quotation marks, adding> SAID MARY?? After all I knew who had said it. Sometimes I'd write: WHY WOULD I WANT THAT? I'D BE A FOOL TO WANT A COAT LIKE THAT ONE! as I was remembering someone trying to tell me that they thought it looked horrible on me and trying to get me to wearing one THEY got me instead.
These were things that disturbed me greatly, that I wanted turned the other way around, or voided completely... for the most part, the opposite of how I felt or what I wanted, or believed, or whatever. But, again, no doubt, for someone looking for a reason to accuse, or play a prank, they could have been taken as things I had said if I didn't hasten to burn them for one reason or another... and sometimes other things did come up before I did so.
Looking back now, I see that it is possible that there was a time when someone else did read them, although they surely were none of their business. I had no reason to believe anyone would go through my things like that, in my own home, even if I did leave my papers on the table when I had to leave the room for a moment, and I have to wonder what their motive would be and who would do that. Perhaps they were looking to find out what my schedule for the week was, or how much I paid on car insurance, or what??? It wasn't honorable, that's for sure.
And, perhaps, thinking this was like a diary ( You know A DIARY where the TRUTH is kept secret... sigh...) if they read those things, they would say AH HA! NOW I KNOW HOW YOU REALLY FEEL! I think this is highly possible for reasons that aren't easy to explain, or prove, however. For one thing, they never confronted me about it, but I did I have a few others accuse me of saying something I didn't say and never would have said about them, which made no sence to me at the time, yet they insisted that they knew the truth, and it didn't occur to me at the time that someone might have done that.
Somewhere I had read, or heard, of someone doing this little, psychological, cleansing ritual with paper and fire, ( not intended as anything other than that, thank-you ) and it sounded like a good way to vent my disgust without hurting anyone. Well I still think it can be, but I would suggest that if there is anyone out there who does this, make haste to put them to the fire as soon as you make a record of them, lest someone use them to cause YOU trouble.
* These are things many writers probably have had to endure... including kids who write essays in school or college ( poets, lyricists, etc. included ) In fact, I know it has happened there too. ANYTHING YOU WRITE, CAN, AND MAY WELL BE USED AGAINST YOU, even analyzed by expert troublemakers looking for hidden agendas and intentions... maybe even in a court of law...
> SO this thought would SEEM to be "tis better to imply than to say it like it is and never ever write a note, even if only intended for yourself to re-read ... because> Even if it's not published, the harm it can be as bad a s a lawsuit, as painful as being hit by a truck and living through it, and as bad as being judged without the benefit of a trial or jury and sentenced to hell for a crime you didn't commit ... because after all, they know the TRUTH now and nothing you say will ever change that!! So maybe you should never ever write ANYTHING... especially if it has your name on it..."
>>>>>> But how DO I feel about this?
The TRUTH of the situation, if encountered, is the best option, (if you are even allowed to speak your piece, and even if they don't believe you ) with rare exception ... or you too can get lost in the maze of suspicions. It's enough to have other people twisting things you say all around and throwing it back at you, and worse if you succumb to it too ... If it's true, it's true... and stick to it... because other people can twist anything if they want to... but their stories are like vines growing on a sturdy Oak... they will fall away, but the tree will remain long after. (YOU are the sturdy Oak... at least I hope you are. ) Stand up for yourself, unless it's a matter of actual life and death perhaps, and don't let anyone make you ashamed or afraid to be who you are... because if you do, then a part of you, YOUR TRUTH, YOUR LIFE, YOUR DREAMS, YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY has already been replaced by who THEY are... and THEIR contorted, fabricated perceptions of YOUR REALITY ...
*Well, time has passed... I make my notes of the day, journals, which tend to be my appointment and" things to be done lists", but they are also of things that have happened in a day. Usually they are only my experiences events and rarely about things I have heard or felt... except that I have recorded the blessings and my feelings about them, or made a simple note of something that happened and bothered me, so I could think back and see what I might have done differently or how I might have corrected a problem.
>>> AND NOW, having written my piece, to be used by anyone who has experienced similar things but hasn't found the words or time to express it, I think I will wash my hands of this...
.... out, out, out to sea for purifying! " = )
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