A message to myself

 

Sept. 4th 1980

 

Okay, I’m here again, trying to explain today to some faceless me in the distance future.

Sometimes it is difficult to be exact or to envision my audience.

Sometimes the only person I care about is my future self, trying to fix in time feelings I know time will have erased in the intervening years.

Other times, I think I’m writing for a mass audience, hoping some future literary students will study my writings – talk about ego, or perhaps worse, the terrible need for immortality, my need to live beyond myself in the mind of others I will never know.

Don’t laugh, we all need dreams, you my future self, and me.

We need to work towards something, even if that something sounds a little pretentious even as I scribble down these notes.

But can you, my future self, mock me for it?

This, of course, has become a morning ritual for me, my first words in a long journey of words I hope will last me through the whole day.

These need be the most sincere so that later I can feel more comfortable spinning my lies.

I write here so that you will know me as I am at this moment, although I know I choose quite intentionally to limit the point of view and to make you believe that what I record here are the most important events of the day.

They often aren’t, partly because I’m too scared to reveal the true nature of most conflicts even to you.

There are times when my intentions are confused; times when I really believe other people will read these pages and will judge me by them.

Dare I admit to the struggle against desire I had to day, how I struggled to turn my gaze away form temptations of the flesh?

How can I describe the longings I have for Susan to come heal me by wrapping me in her arms.

Everyday, I see people who struggle to find the right person, sampling everything they can in the fear they might miss something if they don’t.

My whole life and these pathetic pages are a mere shadow of my jagged thinking, an attempt by my morning self to make sense of the jigsaw puzzles of emotions I feel the rest of the day.

In some ways, I have been reborn, and find myself touching new people each day, some with intense desire to know them better, others I find full of friendship or pain, still others, who admire my talent as a writer, even when I still doubt my abilities.

I suppose my greatest desire is to use these words to make other people see what I see and feel what I see, by other people, I include you.