Pickled Memories

 

I was born with writing in my bones. Is what I would say if I had enough confidence to back my writing or at least enough to tell myself that taking pride in a craft does not make me arrogant.

I love writing. Ever since I was a kid, I loved writing. I loved the idea of crafting stories on paper. Making people go through the emotional spectrum that I went through growing up. I had figures I looked up to like my uncle, an incredible poet. But I don’t think I’d be able to find everything I wrote as a kid. My “mini stories” are probably discarded or hidden in tatters in dozens of strange places in my house. My lil articles are probably inside some bag under my parents’ bed.

However, the oldest thing I could find is something I started at the age of 13. I started a rather cheesy “writer’s mansion” journal series. Inspired by the Diary of a wimpy kid, I decided to tell my stories, setting my memories in stone for when I grew up. It’s been almost 6 years since. There’s a funny pattern I picked in all the episodes I wrote in the writer’s mansion. I only talked about the good parts. Well, mostly anyways. One thing I was really able to do is capture the essence of myself each time I wrote. Reading those episodes now, I could tell how I felt back then, what was going through my head and why I made some bad decisions and how they affected me. This life is a test, and no matter what I’ve written, I was unable to hide the sorrow in some of the things I wrote. Sometimes it felt like everything around me moved at a faster pace than I was. Meanwhile, I was stuck in the past trying to restore what I broke after making a rather ugly mistake whose effects still echo to this day. I really wanted to be responsible. In the 5 years I wrote to myself, I almost always discussed who I was, what my role is and how I wanted to be a responsible grown up. I still aim for that, except now I have a clearer image of what that’s like. That image will continue to clear up and flourish as I grow.

Those memories might not cover the full story, but at least they kept me in touch with myself. Which, frankly, is something I find quite adorable. To be able to talk to yourself from the future, not knowing you will get to do so until you are in the future.  What I like even more is that I kept all those written journal entries in a jar I was gifted with around the time I started writing regularly to myself. Inside that jar are bite-sized goodbye notes from people whom I never met again. I like to check these messages from time to time. Even more so than I like to read my cringefest of a journal.  One major takeaway here is that things do get better over time. Just like these pickled memories I keep inside my small jar.