Rewriting history

Three years ago tomorrow, I moved to LA.

Three years ago today, I packed up the final items in my apartment, and spent the day walking back and forth to the UPS store to pick up just a few more boxes for my stuff. I kept underestimating the amount of boxes I would need, the amount of stuff I had accumulated over seven years in New York. The UPS store was only a block or two away, but I had to pass no less than three Irish pubs to get there. The bars were fairly empty on my first trip, mid-afternoon; by happy hour, they were packed, and I walked back from my third UPS trip only mildly sorry to be skipping the festivities. I had bigger plans ahead.

Today, at 4:30, my boss decided we should all leave work early and head to the Irish pub downstairs. Can't argue with the Man, so we shut down our computers and had a few rounds of green beer.

Ah, well. The gym will be there tomorrow.

More than a year ago, I submitted a bunch of old, embarrassing journal entries to be considered for the Cringe book. To my (not-so) surprise, like, 5 or 6 of them were chosen, and I've had to resend a number of entries back a second and now, third, time in higher resolution to ensure they'll show up in print. Some of this stuff was written as far back as 1988 - in pencil - so I'm not sure how much my basic scanner will be able accomplish. With this most recent request came the gentle suggestion that, if I was comfortable with it, I might tear out the actual page to scan, rather than flattening the notebook against the glass, where words get lost in the fold and the binder's crease picks up a shadow.

At first, I shuddered at the thought of tearing out the pages, defacing these books that have survived 15, 20 years, intact. It's not that I go back and read them, necessarily, or do anything more than shuffle them around from apartment to apartment, city to city, one bedroom to another, where they wait, hope, for me to one day finish the story I started. Rather, at this point, it's more of a testament to the fact that I have kept them this long; that these crazy, drama-laden details exist, not just in my memory, but in bubble letters and bad handwriting in sticker-clad notebooks under my bed.

But then I realized that I was doing more harm to the entire journals by bending and folding and manipulating them under the scanner than if I simply ripped out a page here and there. They've served their purpose, I thought. This book needs them more than mine do. So, with trepidation, I retrieved my scissor from the kitchen drawer, and made an awkward cut down the length of the first page, removing it from its placeholder in history.

It felt monumental, and yet, uneventful. Monumental in that I live to document, to detail, to tell stories from start to finish. I have 15-20 photo albums here in LA, more at my mom's house in Boston -- all showcasing pictures in chronological order, each meticulously labeled and captioned so as never to forget a minute, a memory. With a single shear, I swiftly disrupted the continuity of the story of my teenage life. At the same time, the act felt impersonal, unexceptional, the girl's life in those books so far removed from the woman I am today. I let my personal attachment go, and kind of wonder what made me hold onto it so long to begin with.

Recently, I've been given an opportunity to rewrite some stories, but to do so, I have to learn to tell them in a new way. This means breaking some long-held habits, looking in the folds, and considering new, additional points of view. I'm trying to break out of my comfort zone, disrupt my tendency to want to wrap things in a neat little package, and accept that, even after three years, some boxes still need to be sorted through.