old hard words

If you kept a diary as a kid or as a teenager you know how reading back can be mortifying.

The beauty of blogging is that you can go back and edit out the things that make you cringe with a delete button. I'm sure there are copies of the original somewhere in the mysterious internet where nothing is ever truly gone, but it's a hell of a lot easier than ripping out pages which is what I did with one of my adolescent diaries when I was in my late 20s.

Now when I look back at my little red paisley notebook, seeing the stubs from all the missing pages is a constant reminder of something vaguely pathetic that I can't even recall. It's like not being able to find the source of a bad smell.

It's hard to differentiate between free will and lack of responsibility. I am never sure if saying no is justified. There is always this little kid in me that feels like I'm being bad and so I do what others expect because I feel I have no choice. And it is always shocking to me...and frightening and liberating when I have the realization that in fact I am an adult, and I am perfectly entitled to say no to almost anything.

But "everything has a price".

And indeed my mother's words still ring true. The only difference is that now my survival isn't quite so much at stake.

Back then I had nowhere to go. No one to provide the necessities of life. Growing up in an upper middle class family it would seem that I should never have felt that things like that were on the line, but I did. That was the only leverage she had.

Now on a bad day even the wind feels life threatening. It all seems so dangerous. But the truth is, now I am my own enemy.

I am the only thing that comes between me and my saying "no".