Shredder

This afternoon I was lying on my bed, in the same pajamas I’ve worn for three days now, baby Ember peacefully asleep on my chest, when I realized suddenly what I had to do. Right away. I lifted floppy Emmy and handed her to her mother, and descended immediately into the basement. In dark corners dwell scores of teetering boxes: camping gear, baby clothes, reels of quarter-inch audio tape, framed paintings, thirty years of tax records. I hung a carpenter’s lamp to illuminate the area I wanted to explore. Underneath and behind a dozen broken, heavy and unstable boxes was what I sought: a carton labeled Journals. Do Not Read!!

For years I’ve worried that someone would discover my treasure and peruse every word. It’s an illogical concern, since half a page will knock you flat asleep. But if someone did read it, it would smash my established reputation as an upstanding, serious, god-fearing, law-abiding, selfless person.

My first journal was one of those black-and-white marbled ones. It had been a present from my husband, a writer. May she surpass the master, he’d inscribed on the inside cover. He believed my writing had potential, yet knew his encouragement in no way threatened his supremacy.

My writing began innocently enough: mostly random notes describing scenes I might flesh out into a story one day. Some were topics assigned to me by my husband, who had been my professor the year before. “Make a list of everything that was in your bedroom when you were twelve.” (Fun assignment.) He’d scribbled some corrective notes in the margins.

By the second volume, things had changed. My writings went dark, tortured and secretive. In the little white square on the cover I’d scrawled, Ginna’s Book Two. Private. Keep Out!!

Tantalized by this warning, I decided to glance inside before beginning the destruction. I was shocked. It wasn’t just the whining, the drama, the self-pity. It was also genuinely sad stuff. And maybe the worst part is that the nature and causes of much of the sadness are the same as they are now, 33 years later. What have I been doing all these years? I kept wondering. How is it that I haven’t resolved one single thing? I’m 56 and I still despair about being abandoned in love, about being useless, unmotivated and unlovable, and about trying to survive debilitating depression. Seeing the same fears span so much time, I understood why I’ve lost hope of change.

I shredded aggressively and compulsively. If I paused, I knew I wouldn’t continue. I wanted to read what I’d poured so much soul into years ago, perchance to stumble onto revelations that could enlighten me today. In fact, on occasion while detaching a fistful of paper from the binding, I’d catch sight of an entry about something that seemed quasi-interesting. But in my current state of mind I knew I was in danger of sinking into a deeper mental decline. So I was ruthless. If it’s worth remembering, I’ll remember it, I thought, knowing I was lying to myself.

Among the entries whose destruction I regret were those about my daughters’ childhoods and certain radio memories like interviewing Mr. Rogers. I annihilated an entire volume about my solo adventures in Ireland, hanging out with the All-Ireland tin whistle champion, discovering magical fairy places, and visiting illegal pirate radio stations belonging to the IRA in the north. I should have saved it but I didn’t. These last few days I’m trying to purge possessions, including memory. They’re weighing me down.

One interesting facet of skimming through these volumes was seeing the evolution of technology, from handwritten script to dot-matrix printing to laser.

My favorite parts of my journals were the occasional drawings. Though they weren’t as skillfully crafted as the words, they were much purer: less self-conscious and self-pitying. Some were funny and some dark. They were clearer windows into memory. It made me think I should give up writing and do bad drawing instead. I don’t like drawing faces so if I have an idea that involves people, I turn us into pigs. I’ve done an Allison family tree of pigs. Doodled words in class notebooks are more succinct than their prose counterparts: “I am uncontrollably anxious that he hasn’t called me for four days. I wonder what I’ve done wrong. Maybe it’s when I asked him to kiss me. I don’t know if I can stand this much longer” is what the journal entry might read. The doodled equivalent: “—>C”¢A”¢L”¢L,  feckbean~~”

In addition to a dozen journals, I shredded three fat folders of thermal-paper faxes from the mid-90s: all that remains of an epic literary love affair. There was great wisdom in there, and honest affection. It could have been a good source of encouragement in darker moments. But then again, nothing is untainted, and rereading it would have its own hazards. So it’s in shreds now too.

After a few hours, a lifetime’s worth of words was crammed into five bloated white trash bags that look like waterlogged torsos. That’s a lot of words. Most of the words were drivel, but they were my drivel: change and stasis, faith and heartbreak, hope and despair, good decisions and insanity — a thirty-plus-year catalog of experience, sadly lacking a comparable accumulation of wisdom.

I was struck by how the themes are the same now as then. New-agey people always say that’s true: that until you resolve stuff, you keep seeking it out till you get it right. Whatever. Either way, I was disturbed to see suffocating amounts of self-hatred and regret and shame and terrible insecurity in love. Those are not necessary, yet they have been as steady as my breathing. There were also some singular tragic events and experiences that I couldn’t bear to read about. Loss has played a lead role: losing people, hope, safety. About every other page for 30-plus years there’s been a doozy of a nightmare. And I was very surprised to realize that I’ve been battling major depression, even knowing that’s what it’s called, for all this time. I can see why name I’ve given up the hope that I can beat it. Wish I could shred all this stuff and not just its description.

As I shoved the last paper through the grinder I couldn’t decide which bothers me more: my sorrows themselves, or my inability to get them to stop haunting me. Perhaps from here on out I should nix the words and turn to bad drawings for whose inadequacy I can berate myself.

Here’s one I did on Crete in 1978. The cistern looked like a pig.