Blast from the past…

Today, I made a goal to get through three of the bins I’ve had in my basement forever. When I moved out at 22, I packed most of the crap I didn’t need immediately into bins and put them in the storage room in the basement of my new home. When I moved again at 27, I dragged them up from that basement and plopped them into my new basement. 

I’m 42, and a lot of those bins have remained untouched. College notebooks, old journals, old letters, photos… they contain a plethora of items. I spent five hours today walking down memory lane as I pieced through a few of them. 

One of the things that astounded me most was the amount of letters I had written to people, but never given them. Oodles of them! Another was the sheer amount of notes I had from high school. But I think it was my journals that were the biggest surprise. Reading through some of the passages, I was reminded what it was like to be 14, 18, 20; what it felt like to have very big emotions at that time. I’ll be sharing some of the entries over the coming months as I find good ones to share. 

One the of journals had passages from high school. I read about my crushes, my hopes and dreams. One was from college, dealing with a relationship. What struck me about this one was how much I depended on someone else for my own self worth. I was never very good back then at being independent, and this journal reminded me of how deeply I put my value into the hands of others. 

I really, really wanted to be loved and for a long time, I knew I was. Until I knew I wasn’t. Around this time, I had gone from flowers and displays of affection to nothing - according to one entry, I didn’t even get a card for my 21st birthday. To be fair, I made a mess of the relationship long before this, but I loved him so much, I couldn’t let go. I knew though, through this change in how he previously showed his love, that he was no longer in love with the person I was. The previous entries (about 2/3 of them) were pages of how special he made me feel and how in love I was, and it was sort of surreal to see the relationship basically fall apart on the pages in my hands. 

At any age, it hurts so profoundly to not be loved. 

And what struck me is the depth of pain I spoke about, the memory of which has faded over time. But for a bit tonight, I remembered how awful it felt back then to not feel loved by someone I loved so deeply. (And didn’t really know how to love well at the same time.) But what springs to my mind is the fact that despite knowing the love wasn’t there anymore, I was still longing for it; begging for it. How many times in our lives have we begged for someone to love us knowing full well they could not do that in the way we needed? Please tell me I’m not the only one!

It’s crazy how those emotions can almost feel current in your heart because of the memory tied to them. I’m glad that I’ve grown since back then, but the truth is that for a moment, I felt that pain that I had at 21; that deep ache to be enough for someone. I still feel that today in different ways with different people in my life. I’ve talked about that before - I want to be enough. I’d love to hear your stories, if you’d be open to sharing them. (I’ve redacted some of this to protect the other party and hide words I don’t want my kids to see lol).