rediscoveryproject

[rediscoveryproject]

#4 -- 2002 (21 years old)

Now, obviously things weren't always "just fine" during my parents break up. My ambivalence was mistaken for numbness by my mother - my confused silence seen as a way of punishing her, and myself.

My 9 year old vocabulary was unable to express my true mental state - even when thrown into therapy with a man whose breath could be classified as a deadly weapon. I held back. I pretended.

Something inside me shifted. I became hardened and keenly aware of the sadness that has been a constant part of my existence (see, it's always been there). It was not given to me by my parents, their constant fighting keeping me awake at night, my mother crying & begging for my father to stop whatever it was he was doing - to stop destroying, to show her affection, to care that she was hurting.

But even then, I knew my father was unable to comprehend her crying. He, so badly damaged, so chemically imbalanced that he lacked that sort of inherent capability. His empathy had either never been there, or had been taken from him long ago by various forces, not least among them, his own brilliance.

His IQ was higher than anyone's in my small town (and probably anyone I've met so far). And he knew it, and so did everyone else - and that is what made him dangerous. He had yet to be humbled by the failure his inability to HOLD would eventually inflict upon him - unable to hold a job, to hold onto money or possessions, to hold together any relationships other than with me.

These failures have shaped him into this man-child today. Now older and grey haired, he has lost just about everything except his superior ability to understand...everything...but himself. That type of understanding remains elusive to him and his attempts to trap it.

As much as I love him, and hate him for so many things - I fear for him. I fear for myself as well, that whatever is inside him, whatever gift was given to him that made his brain so powerful, but his life such a mess - is inside me as well. We are so much alike, he and I. The way we think - connect thoughts together. The way we look. The way we get into inexplicable funks that no one can pull us out of. We are the same.

[rediscoveryproject]

#3 -- 2002 (21 years old)

I have yet to finish a single thing I have ever started, except school. I have so many ideas in rapid-fire succession, a short attention span, rattly nerves that make it hard for me to stand still - and last, but not least, a horrible memory when it comes to anything real and tangible in my life.

Someone once asked me what my first memory was and I am just about incapable of coming up with it to this day. I know it's there, like a treasure buried beneath the sand. I somtimes thing I can see a tiny "X" far off in the distance - my shovel in hand - ready to dig for it. I run, but as I get up to it, it's gone, and I'm lost - hating myself for not bringing along that metal detector.

My true recollection capabilities bring me back to about age 9. That year and a couple that followed were fairly tumultuous for a pre-teen, and I still have trouble. It's just flashes mostly. Of the bad things, primarily. Why is that? I thought people remember the good things first & foremost, no matter how bad the situation actually was.

I remember being asleep in my grandparents' bed, and then feeling my mother's beautiful fingers running through my hair as she talked to her mother. I'm lying in between them, face smashed into the pillow as usual. I was in between asleep and pretending to be asleep and heard them talking about my father. She's decided to file for divorce. I feel like my heart has stopped beating, I can't feel my fingers or toes, I hold my breath.

I know (deep down) that this is the right decision for her to make - a little part of me wonders why she waited so long to come to this conclusion. Another part of me feels guilty that the reason is probably me. She has sacrificed her happiness for mine - her freedom for my necessary connection to him. How I wish she knew then that I secretly wanted them to separate - knew that they were better people a part from each other, but that this want had been overshadowed by that girlhood fantasy of miraculous normalcy - a bit of fairy dust sprinkled on our foreheads, turning us into the perfect family.

I start to breathe again, after what felt like an hou trapped underwater, and I silently work out my feelings. I decide right then and there to be OK - to ride the wave and never look back.

I guess this part-time memory loss is the end result of that snap decision at 9 years old. Everything before that comes in only the cloudiest of snapshots. I thought this was normal until I started discussing it with friends. They have very clear moments where they can actually FEEL their earliest memories, experience being there instead of treating their past as some sort of play they watched from a balcony, like I do.

[rediscoveryproject]

#2 -- 2002 (21 years old)

I am preparing to graduate from college this coming May. As I sit down to evaluate what I have come to understand and accomplish over the last four years, I am struck by the amount of uncertainty and insecurity I feel regarding my future - and my lack of preparation for it.

[rediscoveryproject]

#1 -- 2002 (21 years old)

This is me bearing my soul to you...why? Why now? Why you? Those questions are hard to answer, yet that is exactly why this must be written. To give my life meaning by coming to understand who I am and to accept that person as I come to be, (truly seen for the first time in my entire life), by another person, someone I don't know and who otherwise would never have come to know me. It is the act of self-disclosure at its paramount - leaving the writer open, broken and vulnerable, yet finally able to breathe freely on her own, and leaving the reader with a sense of truth and connection.

[rediscoveryproject]

Here we go.

On my 43rd birthday, while going through a closet, I found a box filled with notebooks, journals and scraps of paper. And my eyes started to well up with tears. It was like running into an old friend. Except that old friend was me - my younger self, reaching out to me from the pages.

And the timing could not have been more meaningful - I recently lost a job that I was committed to for 13 years and have been going through the process of grieving the past, and making decisions about the future. I've been actively trying to rediscover the version of me that aggressively pursued my career to become the leader I am today, in order to prepare for what may come next.

What I didn't expect, is that the person I was before I became a corporate ladder-climber would be there - patiently waiting for me to find her! She was in all of the words, on all of the pages, in that box. That pink box that had been pushed to the back of a closet over the years, and fittingly, was only found because I finally, through being unemployed, had the time to organize that closet I always meant to get to, but never did. It feels meant to be.

I used to be a prolific writer - though always in free-form. Nothing ever finished, just thoughts & feelings - sometimes prose, sometimes lists, or one-off sentences that would sound nice and repeat in my mind until I wrote them down. I saved all of these musings in this box when, at 30 years old, I moved from NYC back home to Connecticut in the fall of 2010.

I honestly can't say what happened that made me stop writing, it just sort of happened. The pressures of work, dating, ultimately getting married and caring for a family. People can get so far away from who they once were so easily. Time and circumstances add up and here you are, cleaning out a closet and being reminded of a version of you that you now miss.

So, I decided to honor my younger self - and all of her loneliness, longing, curiosity, bravery and hope - by creating a blog and filling its pages with the contents of that box.

I hope that going through these writings will reconnect me to who I was, (and still am) and that they will now live forever - wild and free - on the internet. I also hope that some young woman will stumble upon them and find herself in the words, and feel maybe inspired, maybe less alone in her journey to discover herself.

This is The Rediscovery Project. A collection of writings by a young woman, from her teenage years in the 90s, through the end of her 20s in 2010. Let's go.