Inflatable Sheep

I've started a little mini project: reading all of my diaries from beginning (1964) to my last entry last year. I don't know what the end results will be. I don't know exactly what it will accomplish. I just have a sense of having to know where I've been in order to know where I am. Not that my diaries will give the complete picture. I find I write when I'm lonely, when I'm lost, when I have no one. I seldom write when things are good. I hope it doesn't just depress the hell out of me or make me feel like I haven't learned a damned thing.

Going back in time, seeing my younger, very vulnerable self—don't know whether to tell me to snap out of it or to give me a big hug. So much turmoil, so many expectations. And, dang, I really gave it my all.

I did find a section in the summer of 1969 when I was going to be a senior in the fall that I had not read before. I wrote every day for about two weeks. It was all about going riding around to get a Coke, all the boys I saw and talked to, what I was wearing, Daddy was coming home from Vietnam—a sweet slice of time.

But it's hard to see me grow from a flighty, boy-crazy girl to a man-crazy woman wading through depression, suicide attempts, and marriages. I've been relatively stable for the past ten years since I got my Hope. I sometimes forget where I've been. Reading these entries brings me back, makes me realize that I've been around the block more than a few times.

I'm up to 1977 and about to give birth to my daughter, Sherah, whom I had on my own. Good thing I didn't know the hard things ahead of me. I dread reading those years.

Sherah, now 30, has let me know she has absolutely no interest in my diaries after I've died. She thinks it's the equivalent of seeing your mom naked, and lord knows we can't have that. So, I figured when I'm cremated, I'll have someone burn all my diaries and mix my ashes with my diary ashes and scatter them somewhere I would like.