time to hyperventilate!

okay, today i did something very very brave.
i threw out a bunch of my old notebooks filled with my poetry.

i tried first to go through them and perhaps archive some of it on my computer, because i really love that no matter where i've gone, no matter what has changed or stayed the same in my life i have always written. i love having those words to reference the freshness and urgency of the things i once felt.

but today, flipping through those books and reading all those words felt so much different than i had anticipated. i used to LOVE reading them, laughing at my dramatics and such, but today, i just felt strange and voyeuristic. i felt like i was reading something someone else wrote and that i shouldn't be reading. there were a few words i held onto, but for the most part i just chucked them.

i was reading about times in my life where i was pining for people who only hurt me. or people who were just too kind and polite to tell me there was never any hope that they would love me. i read all the declarations of love, all the pain of defeat, the wailings of being depressed and thought it was time to get rid of them.

some of them were awful and some of them were actually pretty good if i do say so myself.
basically, it's stuff like the poem below that made wake up and realize it's time to let go of the past. it's done nothing good for me to look back - i'm so ready to move forward!

i hate you
for your lack of interferance
the omission of courage
you're the encapsulation of
broken promises
i would put everything on the line
but you would never let it ride
you'd never interrupt for the sake
of your own desire
watch me walk away in the hands of another
even as i look over my shoulder
you stand waving
infuriating
why can you not just tell me
how much it hurts to see me go?

[i wrote that one when i was probably about 21. SO melodramatic!]