You Are Here.

You can speed it up.

You can slow it down.
You can even freeze a moment, but you can't rewind time.
You can't undo what is done.
- "Cash Back"

Sometimes its hard to believe the past actually happened. That memories are real and I did live the life I recall having lived.

I think this has always been the main driving force for my need to keep a journal, a blog, some sort of documented proof and account of how I ended up where I am as I write this. Living the 'now' that will eventually be looked back upon in the future the same way I recall my past at this moment.

When I was a little girl I'm not sure what I thought I would be doing with my life in November of 2009 (probably not typing this entry on a plane flying from my parent's home in Mexico to my Brooklyn apartment wondering how I'm going to get the money to turn my 'temporarily disconnected due to nonpayment' Blackberry back on, I'll say that much at least). To be honest, I didn't think about the future much at all. Just as I still don't. Its too vast, unknown and uncharted. It's admitting and accepting the fact I'm going to get older, and only continue to do so until I don't. Taking into account my chipped sparkle nail polish, the panda print t-shirt I'm wearing and a stuffed puppy named Wrinkles tucked away in my luggage beneath the plane, I think its safe to say this is a concept I've still yet to accept. The main difference is that 20 years ago, it'd have been a stuffed kitten named Copycat who now resides on top of a bookcase, her stitching worn thin and her traveling days over.

The only definitive action I knew I had to do was to write. Poetry, journals, diaries, dreams, even attempts at literotica (really). I have boxes of notebooks, some filled cover to cover, others abandoned half way through, beginning around 1990. Age five (yes, I already owned Copycat. Just in case you were wondering. She was my "show & tell" EVERY show & tell throughout kindergarten). I think it's due to this fact that my memory is as keen as it is (although there's a lot I wish I could forget). I knew that words, and the ability to manipulate them, was a powerful talent to possess. Words can get you what you want, they can transport you to different realities and they can tear a person apart from the inside out.

The thing about writing though, at least when it comes to writing ones own experiences and viewpoints, is that there IS no illuminated path to follow towards an ultimate predisposed destination. You can only write about the past or the present, and there's not much point in writing about the present (or more accurately, it's not really possible), so that leaves you with the past. Whether it's 20 years ago or 20 hours ago, its already happened and there's nothing more you CAN do but document it. You just have to be careful not to get hung up on or attempt to live in it - this will only cause your present to be put on pause resulting in a future not worth looking back upon, much less drowning in.

Sometimes I look back on my old diaries and wish I could reassure my past self that whatever was causing me to hurt would eventually cease. That the heartbreak of losing a hamster or losing a lover would subside. That time would pass, no matter how slowly it may seem to at the moment, and before I knew it I'd be an "adult" who should know better - but still doesn't. That I should just enjoy the present because eventually it will only be a memory, something to write about, and who wants a book full of long ago pain, no matter how trivial it will eventually become (or how well tragedy sells)?

I wish I could go back and tell that little girl this.

I wish my future self would come back and tell me this.

Even if she does still have a stuffed animal to keep her company.

Copycat Stock Photo

Copycat 2009