Dear Diaries

One of the traits which I am less proud is my tendency to re-read my old journals.
I don't know why I do this - perhaps it is narcissism. Maybe I just like my own writing best! (How narcissistic). Maybe there is nothing better than to sit at night by a candle and try to make sense of things - that is probably it.

There they sit, my journals, arranged chronologically in an old steamer trunk I bought for 5 dollars at a garage sale. Some are them are beautiful - hand-bound with cream coloured vellum... others are just looseleaf stapled together, all are full to bursting. When I left home, I took only one suitcase, and it contained (in addition to completely impractical clothing and far too many toiletries) my scribblings... granted I moved out when I was 20, so there were (mercifully) far less scribblings then there are now. Interestingly, I still write the exact same things that I wrote when I was younger. I still have the same fears and wants and anxieties, for all my belief that I have changed.

I remember when I started keeping a journal - the exact day, to tell you the truth. It was May 10, 1996. I was sitting in Chemistry class and we were supposed to be working out some formula or another, and I wrote (in copperplate script, as was my custom)

"Ben is gay".

I remember feeling deeply afraid at that moment, for it was the first time I had accepted this, much less written it down. I don't know why I was compelled to write these words at that precise time, but nobody ever plans the moment when they cannot take it anymore. Nobody says "in 3 days and 10 minutes I will not be able to live a lie any longer". And so you should always expect the profound and the life changing to occur at inopportune times - while you are brushing your teeth, or writing your LSATS. Or as a 16 year old in chemistry class, as I was.

I was afraid, for change, by its very nature begets fear - especially if that change leads to increased vulnerability and openness, as it did in my case. I feared that somebody - my teacher... a classmate...a moth... would walk by and see what I had written and my life as I knew it - my carefully constructed artificial way of being, would spontaneously crumble and I would be alone in the world. Hastily, I crossed out what I had written, and although I felt smug in the notion that I had the power to write the truth, and then to rub it out - as if it had never been, I was compelled to write it again, and so I did. And this time I did not erase it. And I could not stop what I had started.

We were supposed to be working out a formula...one formula or another - some random collection of letters and numbers which would allow us to make a little more sense of the world: We were supposed to find out an an indisputable and absolute truth which we could hold on to and if things became too much or we lost our way, we could at least say "I may not know where I am going and I may not know who I will become but I did learn at one point in time many years ago that if you mix hydrogen and oxygen together in the proper proportions, you will have created water".

Of course, we all know that few of us really remember anything we learned in school.
We remember the moments in our lives when we had the audacity and the courage to write our own formulas - to be sure of one true thing to hold on to so that if things became too much or we lost our way, we could at least say

"I may not know where I am going and I may not know who I will become, but I did learn at one point in time many years ago to accept myself and to be brave enough to walk forward into freedom, even though I thought it might kill me. And I survived."