Things you forgot
I’ve wasted a ridiculous number of hours in the past two days reading old logs. And not old weblogs, for once… but old instant messaging logs. I found a CD where I burned all the logs I had from my DeadAIM (lol) and Trillian days… like circa 2002 - 2005.
It’s really strange to go back and re-read these logs and discover … a lot of things I had forgotten. Some of the memories tickle at my brain… like insertions of people’s names randomly into a conversation, to brink them, or old Away messages (“Polly wanna warcracker?”), whereas others made me feel like I was reading the transcripts of strangers.
And there were some conversations that made my blood freeze in a sort of terrified astonishment because they were so intensely personal. And it was startling because they were with people that I really don’t remember getting so personal with.
So much drama and frustration! I know that the masks have gotten to be more durable as I’ve gotten older, but I really didn’t remember how serious the cracks sometimes were. I like to think I avoided a lot of the needless pain and suffering that besets a lot of teenagers as they muddle through life, but it turns out there were still a fair number of incidents in which a little more maturity would have maybe been a godsend.
Then again, maybe not. Who knows. I’m grateful, at least, that some of my currently enduring friendships that were forged and tempered in this time period were not broken by the sometimes brutal honesty.
Truth be told, though, there’s a part of me that laments the fact that I — and maybe others — have grown to acknowledge that it’s not always best to be completely honest. Or, rather, that’s not quite right… perhaps it is “best” to always be honest, but since the truth is not always the most painless route, maturity demands that we suck it up and avoid confrontation.
Which is unfortunate, because I’ve always been a fan of emotional discharges. The positive ones, of course, but maybe you can’t get those if you’re not willing to risk the occasional negative one too? Hm.
