oh, dear me

It is rare that one can see in a little boy
the promise of a man,
but one can almost always
see in a little girl
the threat of a woman.

- Alexandre Dumas

me. age 11. motel at Disneyland


Inside Candy featured a brilliant post recently titled, dear future me. I asked Candy in my comments whether she had written a similar piece to the child she was (or her inner child). She mentioned that she would work on that and I hope she does.

Since then I've been thinking what I would write to the future me, who has far fewer years separating her from the me I now am than the years that separate me from the girl in the photo above. I realize that I don't want to write to her, not now, and it may be exactly because of the closer proximity.

I've thought also what I would write to the child I once was, who has been incorporated into the present in probably more ways than I recognize. I'm not sure how it would turn out; I'm skeptical of my capacity to do an honest job of it. I didn't pay her much attention when I WAS her and it might require therapy to really see her now. Childhood......I have memories, but not like the vivid memories I find so impressive when I read those written by Jennifer, who is mining hers so thoroughly that she practically hands her readers a pick for us to have a go at some of the gems.

Thinking of describing my childhood right now conjures up one weird word: thick. I feel weighted down when I go there, not in an anchored sense, but with a sense of dragging myself through a dense atmospheric zone of time that I do not like and would like to escape. And I did escape......into physicality and fantasy, some of it dark and secretive and some light and loving. While I nearly always acted like the girl my mother wanted me to be I was really never the girl she thought I was.

Oh, dear me......perhaps writing to the future me is something I should undertake (no pun intended, but this does make me think of my mortality). I don't want to move through my present the way I moved through my childhood, basically unaware of myself and perhaps even feeling undeserving of proper preparation and the realization of dreams. I let the dreams of my childhood die and it sure seems like it would be a bum deal to allow the same outcome for my dreams now.

~