I make a point of looking to the future, but there are times that require me to also look back, to a past I once had.
One of those times was this weekend, as I set about clearing boxes of the junk I have collected over the years. I came across an old notebook of mine. I’m talking about ten years ago kind of old. Well, sort of.
I had made entries aged nine, but, in my year seven (aged 12), I must have found the notebook, as there are frequent new dates and black-pen comments on my previous inputs. And this isn’t a notebook of stories. This time, it’s personal! xD
It got me thinking: is it worth reaching into nostalgia if what we are to find is only spite and anger? What kind of past is that to relive?
And, as I ended up interviewing myself for a third time for a fake newspaper I had facetiously titled ‘The Trash Today’, I wrote a mock article:
They say time is worth a trip down memory lane – to see those forgotten sights, remember those familiar sounds and smells.
The question is whether it is really worth going that far, especially after such a breach of time. The road is filled with innumerable brambles, onto which we equally fall.
Of course, everyone is going to be mortified by their younger selves – like a parent, this is their duty unescapable.
Nevertheless, this does not make duty always better, as case studies have shown. ‘Alex B’, previous writer and frequent reader of ‘The Trash Today’, already reported her mortification in a previous copy, dated many many years ago. However, with a cleared head – and one destined for adulthood – she adds today:
“It’s definitely queer to read over my previous musings. They’re terrible! I especially hate the way that twelve-year-old me was bent towards a propensity to insult nine-year-old me.”
Even so, she adds later that there is want to do it all again, to criticise the criticisms, as it may be.
Perhaps the past does bring out the worst in us, be it looking back down the road we have traversed or making notches in the mud. Who can say?
Alexandrina Brant 
I have to say, my diaries from when I was twelve are utterly cringeworthy. I read them over and think, “Man, I was a pathetic emo kid.”
I prefer to forget that part of me. I daresay when I read my poetry in a few years’ time (I don’t keep a diary except in the slightly abstracted form of emotional poetry, ehehe), I will feel the same way.
I, strangely, never went through the emo phase, though I was incredibly mean, especially to myself, back then. I’d definitely prefer to forget those years,as dramatic as that may sound. I mean, I can forgive the horrendous prose and poetry, but the personal notes are things that should neer have been written. Guh.
Oh, no, I had the full on emo-kid thing. You know, black nail polish and My Chemical Romance and writing in my diary about nobody understood me.
Ooh, really? *winces* I never liked MCR and that little fact would never have made me a good emo. 😛
I think the closest I got was wanting to buy a red wig to wear on weekends. Random.
I still like MCR…. mainly because about eight of their songs are completely perfect for the main character in Watching and so I listen to them when I’m writing him 😀
Well, if that works … 🙂