Coming True | Guards

Yesterday my dad made me go in his basement and go through all my old stuff that I left behind when I moved to California over 10 years ago. Or has he put it: Do something with all that shit or I’m going to throw it out.

I went through six huge trunks full of my old things. I found so much awesome stuff and random crap that I had forgotten about, loved, and was repulsed by. My old trumpet. Some framed pictures of Ani DiFranco that my friend Sack made for me. A vial of sand from the middle east that my uncle sent to me when he was on duty in Iraq. My favorite picnic blanket. It was a random and awesome collection of memories.

But the coolest thing I found was my old diary. A little Hello Kitty book filled with Sadia’s thoughts from age 8 to 13. I brought the diary with me when Sylvie and I had dinner and after a flight a beer we decided it was time for a reading.

It’s so fucking hilarious, awkward and eye-opening to read the thoughts from your 8 to 13 year old self. To watch, through your words, how your personality, opinions, and attitudes develop. To see the how family, school, and boys were be these pressure filled mazes that you used to struggle to navigate through…or still are. To read about a red headed boy with freckles named Taylor that you played with and had a crush on in camp.

To read: I asked Taylor to skate with me on the couples skate. When the time finally came, he didn’t want to skate with me. But instead of telling me he would hide in the boys bathroom…or go to the arcade room. I mean was that rude or what?

And to read: The next time I ask a boy to skate I’ll say “Do you want to skate on the next couples skate? Only as friends of course.

And to discover the first time you made the conscientious decision that from now on, you were going to hide how you really felt.