Sharing My Stupidity For Posterity's Sake

* I couldn't come up with a proper title for this, so feel free to offer one up, thanks.

So I was hanging out with Nana (my 20 yo)
in her room tonight,
while Mr. W was upstairs doing PPI's
with the younger yahoos.
Anywho,
She starts talking about things n' life n' stuff
and I'm nodding along,
relating in my head,
ya know,
with all the stuff she's saying,
And Then,
THEN,
I get a bright idea--
a brilliant, awful idea
and excuse myself with a
"I'll be right back."

I go to the storage room
and poke around for a few minutes--
looking for a box among all the other things
in there--
the Rotisserie,
the christmas decorations,
food storage,
and heaven only knows what else,
until I call down Daisie and ask her to help me find
what I'm looking for--
she points 'em out:
"right there, Mom."

Ahhh yes--
written right on the top of the boxes:
Mom's Journals.

I grab both boxes and take 'em back to Nana's room.

Her eyes widen,
"Yeah? cool!" she says.

So I pull one out--
it's from November 1981.
I was exactly her age then.
Twenty.
And I haven't looked at this journal
since then.
Which, in dog years, is just around 4 years ago,
but in people years,
it's about 29-almost-thirty.

I gulp before I scan the first page...
oh man, I was so dumb.
so so dumb.
fo real.
I sorta cringe at the thought
of what I'm about to do,
and then just get over it.
I'm way past pride at this age,
and so I started to read--
we both laugh at some of the silly things--
my concerns over life:
"I'm twenty years old and I've accomplished so little!", I wrote.
I read and read and read...
at times I feel nauseas at the overly dramatic tones.
At other times,
I recall those deep desires and feelings
from a very naive young Me.

Nana stops me often:
"You wrote then, just like you write now!"
Is that a good thing?
"Oh yeah--you write like you talk now, and it's the same as back then!"
Mmmm, okay then.

She laughs at our similarities...
things I stressed about( boys, relationships, jobs, school, money, boys, etc.)
she opens her journal and
shares that she too has the same concerns,
self-doubts, and desires.
I even wrote that in order to be prepared for marriage,
I felt I needed "to work on sewing skills, housekeeping and cooking skills,
and lose 35 pounds by March."
And just for the record,
I was 135 and 5'9" tall,
a weight that's just a mere wisp of a dream
in my reality today.
Told you I was stupid.
I compared myself to my bulemic roomate--
who was 6'0 tall and wore a size 7.

We go thru one whole journal
until I can't stand it anymore--
I was utterly pathetic naive,
and we talked about my decision to marry someone,
when I had other choices,
and how I saw the red flags even then,
but was too afraid to make a different choice.

I was the horrible warning.

As we finished up,
she gave me a hug,
thanking me for sharing those pages with her,
and
as I packed up the boxes of memories,
I was thinking I coulda thrown 'em all away
and not felt bad,
but then again,
when I say to my kids,
"I know how you feel, I've been there before."--
I have proof.
In my own handwriting.

I've been there, done that
and made it out alive.
My flubs and flaws,
all there in black and white.
Answers to prayers came,
even when I wasn't aware of them,
they came.
The best thing that came out of this was really nice for me,
when Nana said,
"You've always been about God."


So yeah,
I haven't done that before,
but I figured it was time.
My yahoos know I'm not perfect,
and it's all right there,
but so is my heart and soul--
my love of good friends,
my passions and hopes and dreams,
my doodles and pasted-on chinese fortunes,
newspaper clippings,
and written testimonies.
Just keepin' it real, folks.

What about you?
Have you let or will you let your yahoos read your journals?
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know!