Good reasons

There are some very good reasons to keep a journal - especially if you're a teenager - especially if you're a teenager with an absolutely fierce determination to meet a good man and marry him. Someday. Someday would be good. That's what I wrote over and over and over in a thousand different ways.

I've been looking through old journals lately, and I figured out a couple of things. I figured out that it's a wonder my parents survived all the way to my adulthood without needing some kind of medication to soothe their nerves - and it's an even bigger wonder that I did. How can one girl sustain that level of emotional upheaval? If we had to be seventeen forever, we'd combust. Not spontaneously either ... it would be the product of unremitting passions over the course of time. Nobody could live through that.

But I also found out (after I fanned away the smoke and heat radiating off the pages so that I could read them) that I had some very good friends. There was much hugging. I'd forgotten about all the hugging. I'd thought it was only in my dreams, but apparently my dreams were memories and not sheer invention. I really loved all those people all those years ago. I felt their feelings and rejoiced when they rejoiced and mourned with those who mourned, and that's what love is. Even when you're seventeen. And eighteen. And nineteen. It was awhile ago, but tonight when I go to sleep it will be to the rhythm of

God bless Barry.
God bless Brian.
God bless Tim and Greg and Pat and Tom.
God bless Carol.
God bless Larry and Dan.
God bless Jimmy and Billy and Mike and Charlie.
God bless Nancy.
God bless Jim.

I still have more guy friends than girl friends, and I still like a good intellectual sparring match. But I don't need to have the heat turned up so high now. Maybe when I grew up, I also grew my ability to find love. I've sure had a lot of it in my life.