I was surprised to read about Junkies and Prostitutes in my ten year-old journal. Granted, I grew up on the ghetto Lower East Side of the '90s, but still, seeing those words in my scratchy hand was haunting. I guess that should have prepared me for my preteen musings on Holden Caulfield, "He's angry and likes to drink a lot" and my high school stories of a girl getting raped and committing suicide on a beach in Aruba "she was never hungry, sometimes she drank sugar water, but that was all." I wondered what was wrong with me. My artist/social worker father had always encouraged my creativity and now I had pages of prose that stood witness to my weirdness. Yet, there were also notes in the sidelines that made me smile: First Kiss 12/09/98, "my sweat, my eyes, my teenage Authority." Journals housed all my forgotten phases, words waiting to awaken me.
Journals. Bring It Back?
-Royal
