2008-02-01 10:41 a.m.

I ran out of room in my current paper diary. So, I started digging through old ones to look for some blank pages to write in. I have stacks and stacks of them, so I figured one of them had to be only half full.

As I skimmed through the little books I was amazed to see how my handwriting changed over the years. I used to write in a perfect all-caps. Somewhere along the line I shifted to mixed upper and lower case.

But, one thing that I was surprised to see never changed is that pretty much everything I wrote was about heartbreak, sex, food, stupid wordplay that only I will laugh at, and—most of all—girls.

Here's an excerpt from when I was twenty-years-old. December 22, 1996 (Bielefeld, Germany):

Why is it that people are drawn to me and why am I so drawn to them? What is this empathy that I feel, even though I often try to discount it? Am I different, or the same just enough to make people feel at rest? I don't feel odd—different, so to say—but I have a pretty good feeling that I am, although it is only with great confusion and embarrassment that I admit this.

So, why do I want to kiss so strongly the beauty that I see? Why can't I let them be? I feel like I must kiss every beautiful girl. Maybe I am full of passion...maybe I am just addicted. Still thoughts of Bonnie, Paula, Alexandra, and other lovely and somewhat idealized figures fill my thoughts, both day and night.

I noticed that I made lots of lists in my old diaries. I had my own best of and worst of lists. I had a list of all the girls I kissed up until I was eighteen. I wrote this particular list on December 25, 1996 in G�vle, Sweden:

This will be my list of "when I was your age" sayings:

We rubbed sand in our eyes for fun.
We didn't have bricks—we had to clobber ourselves over the heads with boulders we dug from the ground with our eyelids!
We didn't have amusement parks—we rubbed thorn bushes on our naked bodies for fun.
All we had to drink was tar, so be thankful!
We ate wood when we were hungry, damn it!
We didn't have this newfangled "knife." We had to hunt with blades of grass for our food!
Only rich people drank "water"—the rest of us had to be happy with what we had. We chewed on bark.
We cut down trees and let them fall on our heads for fun, and we usually shattered our spines or crushed all our internal organs, but we liked it anyways. It was all we had.
We ate dirt because it was all we could afford.
We didn't use the new invention "paper" for this newfangled "writing." No, we used it to give ourselves papercuts on our eyelids. And you think you have it rough?
We didn't take a car to school—we didn't even have school. We just sat around and let hornets sting our eyeballs for fun.
Eyelids weren't invented yet, and boy were our eyes dry!
The only game we had was 'put the scorpion in your mouth.'

I'm thinking that I should enter in all of my old diaries here so I can revisit them and make them searchable. Maybe I can make a book out of it all when I'm done or something.


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