The best thing about coming home…

Is finding little gems of your past that you forgot you had. The lost photo albums, the forgotten (and frankly embarrassing) year books. The last place soccer trophies that your mom lovingly put right next to your older brother's championship and mvp soccer trophies. (Mine are more special. Smaller, much smaller, but still, regardless, more special (to me)) The first couple of jet lagged mornings after I arrived in Seoul were spent sifting through old photo albums that my mom and dad kept. I came to several conclusions after the fifth album or so.

1. I was a devilishly handsome child. Destructively handsome. How I remained single through this day is some mystery to me.
   
2. My family used to take more photographs.
   
3. Did I mention that I was a good looking kid? Seriously….
   

Realizing the repercussions of conclusion 2, I decided to document my life more actively using a camera. Yes. I am one of those annoying people that take pictures now. Sue me. I came to the realization that I really have no photographic evidence of my own to show for my last ten to twelve years of life. And when adoring fans of mine will inevitably stalk my past for photos of me, I feel as those years will be known as the "dark years", where I was in a drugged fueled haze otherwise known as photographic laziness.

Anyways, the whole reason I bring this up is because I found an unusual gem today. An old diary.

Now I have my suspicions about this diary. It was actually written after I last left Korea so it wasn't left there. My mom oftentimes has a tendency to not respect the personal space that my brother and I, as functional adults need. When she came and visited before, she often time would go through our mail to check our credit card statements, answer our phones, rifle through our personal belongings and such. Normal things that every over bearing mother does. (Wait, no you say? Your mother doesn't do that? She respects the boundaries fiscally and relationship wise that you set up? My mom sounds like a mother from a bad sitcom? Nooooooooooooo…(I found the longer that you stretch the o's in no, the more emphatic and thus effective you make it sound)) Anyways, how one of my personal journals managed to find its way to my mother's apartment in Korea, far, far away from its original resting place in Fairfax, is a subject of considerable amusement for me now. Amusement now, because it's now almost six years removed from the apparent theft and none of the entries really have any relevance in my life anymore.

Besides, I'm happy to have it back, because it was a cool journal. Black, leather bound, with a leather strap to wrap it around to keep it shut. Old school, minus the NON COLLEGE LINED paper. (Non-lined journals are hard to find. They're typically called sketchbooks and are way too big. I personally hate lines. I like blank sheets (even though they intimidate me). What infuriates me more is when paper is lined, it's spaced into huge, bulbous lines that are meant to be filled by infants with crayons. I write small. I don't need the extra room. My large ass takes up enough room as it does)

So the best part (and the worst) of finding an old journal is reading it. And then cringing. A lot. As I read entry after entry about how I loved this girl or that girl and I would never forget her and always love her, I wonder how I wasn't slapped around more as a younger man.

Seriously, the worst part about it was only like six years ago (I initially wrote five, but adding a year adds more distance between me and the sobbing, heartbroken idiot that was writing in that cool journal). At the same time, it feels like it was a life time ago. The person I was then, and the person I am now are, essentially the same, but different. Older, wiser, way more sarcastic, and a lot less forgiving to women and their less than monogamous tendencies. Seriously, I thought I was in love with a girl that managed to have relations with four guys on four straight nights.

I dream about that kind of stamina. (And no, to answer your question, I was not one of the four. I, apparently, had "morals" and neglected to jump on that bandwagon. If I were in the same situation now, I probably wouldn't. Unless I was drunk. And I am drunk a lot)

But seriously. My journal runs like a bad Linkin Park song. It's frankly embarrassing. My first response was to immediately tear out the angsty, tear ridden pages of unrequited love and continue to use the journal as another yet unused notebook filled with characters and plot ideas and such, but I figured for the sake of posterity and the person (sappy, pathetic, and apparently really depressed) that I was, I decided to keep the journal intact, but still use it as a soon-to-be unused notebook for my writing "career." Of course, my second response was to blog about it. And I have poor impulse control, thus here I am, doing what I do best, mocking myself.

So thus, I end, and rightly so, with a poem from the aforementioned journal…

This was scribbled as 'Goodbye, my love.' (In the journal, I forgot the comma)

I just watch(ed) another love leave the stage

Of my life

One last dance

One last glance (oohhhh, it rhymed)

Of a face that will be edged (I think I meant etched) in my dreams for

Countless night(s)

Of a soul that set my heart aflame

Goodbye my love unrealized

I was too timid to act

You were unready to see

My loyalty, my devotion (holy fuck, I sound like a stalker)

And something I know that

Would have been special

Slipped away.

Take care my love unrealized

Your place will remain sacred in

My life

I know that I will soon be forgotten (I wasn't, she still called me from time to time. Got married. Had a kid. But still send me a couple naked pics of her a few years back)

The memory of me blown away

Like leaves caught in a gust of wind.

Time. (Wow. Profound)

Perhaps my heart is a fickle thing

That falls in love so easily (You think?)

But my loneliness is magnified by my loyalty

And what so easily happened

Is not so easily taken away (I probably should have written undone…it sounds a helluva lot better)

The memories, (apparently I didn't drink as much back then)

You eyes looking into mine

Goodbye, my love unrealized

I can only pray that

The thought of you will grow

More unfrequent

And I will learn to love you less

Never able to forget

But maybe, move on

Good bye

Wow. I am speechless. Wait for it. There. I'm wiping a tear from my eye.