Dear diary, or The perils of journaling.

I was aware of them. I knew they were there. Every time I walked by my closet I'd cast a wayward eye towards the box. Like a boogie man hiding in there, a boogie man who knew all my dirty little secrets.

My journals. Back in the day of the teenager I kept journals/diaries/memory keepers whatever you call them religiously. Every day I would write down very important things that happened that particular day.

Things that clearly needed to be written down, to be preserved in a diary for all of time.
 Things such as:
-sometime in 1998: Saw Aidan. We're so perfect for each other obviously. But I just don't know.(30 yr old me thinks "who the hell is Aidan??")
-Met Shannon for coffee at Second Cup. Sat in hand chairs. It was raining. (Also, not written, but I know I had a latte.)
-Had too many blueberry teas Keg size at Brandy's Drunk as fuck. Ashley and I picked up more booze. Man were we wasted. Stopped in at Moe Joe's and we didn't have to pay for anything. Puked all day today. (all very messy writing)

Speaking of messy writing, holy crap, I clearly was not about to win any penmanship awards. All the way through reading these I'm squinting and holding paper up to the light to see if I can get a better look at the words that I wrote that were oh so important back then. Does that say "been or bees? Or even bins? If it's bees, what happened, why'd I need to write about them? Was I stung by one and some hot guy saved me??? A lot of entries are about a boy passing through the course of my day and something insignificant happened and I was clearly compelled to write about it. Some I still think about to this day without having to read the books: From New Years 1998: Ran into Phil- he grabbed my hand through the crowd and kissed it and then gave me a huge hug. Best thing ever. (I stand by this statement)
Other things were less so:  From 2002: Shane came in to the cafe today. He bought a turkey sandwich.
Seriously. I felt like I needed to write down every detail. I was so obsessed with memories. Which is why I have 12 journals spanning over a decade interspersed with pictures of Leonardo Dicaprio, Brad Pitt, Ilia Kulik(figure skater) Tobey Maguire (totally still relevant)  Johnny Depp and oh ya, more DiCaprio pictures.
Some entries are darker than others, some trail off midway through, most of the books aren't completed as I'd have been given a new one for birthday/Christmas/Tuesday that I would start. Some have some incredibly deep thoughts and poems that make me wonder how a 16 yr old can have a thought that deep and profound and whether or not that still happens or if people just use Twitter as their journals, except instead of taping a picture of Leo they just tweet Bieber directly. Is Facebook the new diary? Yes I think so, in some ways. Some of my journals are interspersed with grocery lists, future names of kids lists, days worked, CDs owned, needs/wants lists. Some are just: 2am. BESTTIMEEVEROMGICANTBELIEVETHATHAPPENED.
Omg. what happened??? says 2011 me. Who was I with? Is there photographic evidence of this occurrence???? Which leads to a thorough digging out of old photo albums and attempting to find said night. Luckily flipping through an album is much more enjoyable and hilarious which is why I got distracted writing this blog. Because for the number of journals I have, I pretty much have a matching set of albums.Which is kind of  awesome. It's not as bad as the next generation will be with the plethora of digital photos and the facebookyness of it all but my photos are pretty great. It makes me glad I have the journals, and the photos to remind me of people and stories I've forgotten, people that aren't here anymore, people I'm still in touch with but need to make more of an effort with, and stories that were important to the younger version of Dawn and who she was. It certainly puts things in perspective. Me tripping in front of some dude in 2002 would convinced me the world might as well end. 9 years later I have a more 'keep calm and carry on' attitude and a better sense of humor. If I tripped now I'd want a video of it so I could laugh at myself.
Because let's be honest. That would be pretty funny.