Re-Written

Going through boxes in the basement that have been there for twenty years untouched, unremembered and sorely neglected is no small task, but it must be done. The things of the past must be sorted. In the sorting we find ourselves again. We uncover parts of ourselves that have been lost, delayed, and sorely in need of disposal or else refining. Discarding parts of ourselves and our lives that no longer define who we are is quite freeing and more so to have an opportunity to re-write the pages of the past feels powerful. I found a worn crusty folder with thirty year old “misc. poems” written in blue bic. When I was a teenager , I thought these were brilliant. I read through every one of them, these were not brilliant, they were terrible. They were sappy. They were emotional vomit, they were unacceptable, but they were also an opportunity. I love teachable moments. Reading them through the lens of a mature 45 year old rather than a heartbroken 13 year old, gave me just such a moment to revise. I discovered a secret super power, I can throw out the past that has no value, because they are mine to throw out their mine, but also i had power to keep them because the raw emotion reminds me of some valuable missing puzzle piece or to re-write them in a voice which both preserves the heart of a desperate girl while simultaneously asserting the victory of the woman I am today.

I found old college essays that, regardless of the writing skill, gave me insight into what I was thinking and feeling about life back then. I had forgotten that I felt invisible to my parents, that my mother wanted me to attend the college my daughter is attending now or that it bothered me when students didn’t put their trays away in the cafeteria. I loved Edgar Allen Poe, that creep, and I wrote to readers digest telling them I wanted to be a professional writer “please consider publishing my work.” I can look back with validation, tapping into that same desire, but with audacious insight, skill and realized potential. I can fix the grammar for heavens sake and make my old work better. After all these years taking the advice the professors scribbled in red at the end of each essay, it’s like having a second chance.

What is important? What is useful? What is possible? What do I value? As I strip away the things in the past that no longer matter or define me I gain answers to these questions, and a sort of enthusiasm take over. Suddenly I am energized, as if all my guts are now being held together by just one thing, instead of held in different places all over the house and i can start functioning like a healthy person who smiles and laughs and looks forward to life. All my efforts, passions and ideas can be funneled into one task no longer divided and dysfunctional and life takes on a perfectly sound and sensible shape, one beautiful shape. As I structure , order and read and sift and organize these pieces from my past, I am free from the burdens of “what if” and “maybe” and “some day.” No longer do these apply, tethering me to a a past I do not belong to. No longer shackled to the plethora of emotions and ignorance holding me back..

I found a poem, that had some good parts to it. I took that poem and I reworked it. I became both student and teacher in that moment. I left the good parts because I could hear them and feel them and I knew that girl who wrote them, and she was on to something. But I erased all the cacophony that made no sense, the parts that wreaked of immaturity and predictable repetition. I re wrote it, and posted it here on this blog with all my experience I made it new, and now it is on the stage, rather than being hidden amidst rafters and in mildew filled places, I made it new. God makes us new and we turn and with that newness of spirit and soul make things better. So if you see a poem which is signed Kim Diesso Blenkhorn and dated with two dates, you will know I made something better and within that poem there are parts of me and parts of her, it’s a then and now poem, it’s whole, as I am finding myself more and more these days to be. Something I think that happens to us as we trifle through our past and touch it up with tools from our present and future self.