Pandora's Closet Storage Area

She spoke of going thru her journals from a decade ago, and enjoyed the stroll down memory lane.

I, on the other hand, lock my old journals away in boxes. Unmarked, and sealed with enough duct tape to hold a bumper on a CRX. I know where in the house they are. They are never very far from me, because i would never want them to fall into the wrong hands.

When I began journalling, as a teen, I thought about my "glamourous life", and how I would capture it all on paper. I imagined the publishing of my memoirs after my too young death, and the scandal they would cause.

I pictured people salivating over well-described steamy scenes of passion. I envisioned lovers weeping as they discovered the un-revealed depths of my feelings. I hoped for fury from those I "double crossed", knowing I'd had the last laugh from beyond the grave.

Instead, what I have amassed is boxes of smarm and unexpressed rage. Hopes for loves that never should have gotten my time. Fully described moments of bold stupidity, fueled by desparation and the desire to be 'enough'. Later, when I thought I had grown to an age that I swore I didn't need approval anymore, I find thru reading that I in fact just transferred that need onto whatever abusive emotionally-distant jackass I chose to fill my life with at that time.

I used to read my journals more often. As if by seeing where I had been, I would know better to not go down that road again. But it became more and more painful....

I don't begrudge that girl her elaborately planned suicide attempts, or her bone-achingly deep desire to be loved. She and all her misadventures have made me what I am today.

However, much as I do when I'm entranced in a tv show (I yell at the screen helpful tips, and get frustrated when they can't hear me), I find myself crying out from my soul, "NO... Don't... Please please stop." And yet she barrels away blindly, smacking face first into the pain.

And the reading... it seems to give life again to those feelings. As if by speaking aloud the words I wrote in blood all those years ago, I cast a spell that calls them into being today. I resurrect them from their forgotten hell and set them free, to wreak havoc upon the world, and upon my soul.

When I was a child, I read the myth of Pandora and her box of horrors. Something about the description made me picture those terrors as tiny headless bats, slightly bigger than a 50cent piece, dripping blood, smelling of death, and screeching unholy fury.

That same image asails me when I think of opening that box of journals. This Pandora has fought many demons, and I daresay will fight more. But I will not give life to past terrors, and let the old ghosts come out.

In this way, Duct Tape will save the world.