In light of the plans I have to move out of my house I’ve been doing some de-cluttering lately. This typically begins with the best of intentions but quickly dissolves into me basically skipping down memory lane for an unnecessary amount of time until I decide that’s enough “work” for the day and move on to something else.
(My lack of focus has been mentioned before, right?)
I don’t know what you guys were like in your younger days, but personally I remember being the coolest person on the planet. I’m not kidding. I was for real awesome. It’s possible there were some little hiccups along the way, but overall top of the line cool person. Hilarious, charming, fun….you get the idea.
Except….I was sorting through photos recently and found this:
And not long after, I found this:
I don’t know. I just…..I don’t know. And I just noticed the gold chain. I don’t know why I wore a dude chain. Or why I thought doing a picture in the worst possible pose I could think of would be a good idea.
I mean, we all have one or two old pictures of those wild fashion faux pas, right??? Ok, one little mistake. I was still cool. I have memories and I remember. I was cool. I was!
So you know how you get bored sometimes and kind of roam aimlessly around the internet? Well, I have an email address I’ve had since the internet began, basically. I was doing some of that aimless roaming recently and happened upon some emails from a 10+ year younger me.
It started innocently enough when I saw some cute little emails I’d sent an old friend. Oh what fun! But then…
But. Then.
I saw this list of emails I’d sent myself with no subject. Before I get into this, I’ll share that these were all saved in a nice folder made specifically for them, creatively titled ‘From Me’ because what I’m about to tell you isn’t embarrassing enough.
Before Pinterest existed, we OG internet folk were forced to take such measures as emailing links to ourselves in order to remember things we liked, so I assumed I was about to clean out a bunch of old links I’d wanted to save and starting at the bottom, opened the first one.
I quickly discover they’re not links. Not at all. These are levels of crazy never seen in public before. Each of these emails is basically a journal entry where I analyze the living shit – I mean the most miniscule non-things I turn into things – out of every interaction I had with this guy I had a crush on at the time. Oh. My. Poor. Brain.
A few actual quotes:
“I’m pretty sure I heard him say, ‘Hey Crystal’ – his first time to use my name. hehehe”
“I didn’t get to see him in person yesterday, but we did pass on the road and wave at each other.”
“We passed on the road. He raised a finger to wave. I did the same.”
And the universe goes…
(I stole these images off the internet. I do not own them.)
There are more. Many more quotes I could share, but there’s a limit to how mental I’m going to admit myself to have been at the time.
Y’all. Honestly.
The more I read, the more real energy I had to spend talking myself out of bashing my head against my desk or poking my eyeballs out with hot spoons or giving up on life in general. Fortunately this is a person I do not recognize in who I am today – you know, where I’m doing life adjacent to Crazy Town instead of dead in the town center – which is the most comforting thing I could come up to say about this entire death of my soul that happened when I read these emails.
It was ugly. I mean, really ugly.
I got on my own nerves reading the emails so much that I had to stop because I couldn’t take anymore. Of my own self.
I wanted to be mad at my friends who obviously failed to be good friends and tell me I’d lost my damn mind!!!! but then I remembered how I don’t listen to anyone ever and at least one or two did tell me but I couldn’t be bothered with little things like being a normal human at the time.
*sigh*
I was truly shook at the end of it. I didn’t realize…. Those old emails brought back memories I’d long ago forgotten (read: buried) of things I’d done that seemed normal-ish at the time but….it’s possible I scared people. It left me wanting to look up one or two people from my past and apologize, but they might have spent a lot of money on therapy by now.
I’ll let you all know that my days of skipping down memory lane are now over. Ruined. There is no more ‘skipping’. Kaput. If I must remember something, I will do so with Friday the 13th theme music playing in my head, afraid of what will be revealed around the next corner.
Someone out there please tell me I’m not the only one. Tell me someone can feel my pain because they too were residents of Crazy Town. You guys have stories too, right? Share! Please share!
positivelycrystal.com 