I’ve been reading my old diaries from 1982. I was an insecure, jealous, obsessive and bitchy 13-year old. I am not reading them for nostalgia. They are too painful and embarrassing to revisit for fun. I am trying to draw some inspiration for a Red Riding Hood story I am writing.
So, I apologise to everyone who knew me when I was 13. I don’t think I was a nice person. Actually, I withdraw my apology to many of the boys I knew then. Do you know what bastards you were? You might be acceptable husbands now, but then…
That is kind of the point of the story I am writing. It is about what boys do to girls and how that shapes the women we become. Red Riding Hood’s coming of age story.
It’s odd the things we forget and the things we remember and how memory plays tricks.
On the 30 November, I went to see Little River Band. I wrote
“Went to see Little River Band. Ratshit. Next band ok but”
I have absolutely NO memory of this. If someone asked me if I had ever seen this iconic Australian band I would have said never ever. But apparently, I have seen Johnny Farnham in the flesh.
At the end of the entry to the 24 November, I wrote in a shaky very light pen as though I might want to rub it out later:
Got a groggy head. Sore all over.
This postscript is tacked onto the end of the day. I haven’t recorded what happened to make me sore and shaking but I know what it was. It is etched. Unlike the Little River Band.
Meanwhile, I am no longer the jealous type; I have outgrown most of my insecurities. I reign in my bitchiness because of ahimsa. I am still obsessive. I own that.
To quote myself in 1982 “tops mate” and “radical” my school had its own notebooks and I still have them filled with misspelt scribblings.