One thing that I am amazed by now (that I never gave a second thought of back then) was the level of involvement my grandparents had in our lives. Even though we lived halfway around the world, they took rather frequent trips to see us.
On these trips, my grandfather brought along his little camcorder and recorded us and our antics.
I asked my grandfather for a copy of these recordings, and he graciously lent me some of them.
I have been watching them this week, and I find that his perspective of our life is intriguing.
My grandmother told me the other week that our home was "an American island in the middle of the Philippines."
In the process of finding myself, I am finding out how others think of me. It always takes me off guard...and I usually want to react: "No! What?!"
In watching myself at 3, and 9, and 13 is definitely like watching a ghost. I want to climb in the screen and have serious talks with myself, and others. I want to re-live some of the better moments. I suddenly remember other things too. The camera catches the last bits of an argument between my parents. It shows me using all my older sister's sand when we are playing together . It shows me when I was young, and it shows me growing older. Young and carefree. Older and more cautious. Older and still rather stupid...
I remember some of these things suddenly for the first time in a long time.
1 comment:
I've kept a diary/journal since I was 11. Going back and rereading them is exactly what you described: seeing someone that you don't recognize as yourself, seeing this person change into the person you are now, and then remembering little things that prove that you really are the person.
I'm definetely not the person that I was at 15, but I still "feel" just as dumb, whiney, annoying, clingy, etc. Being honest with who I was then and the problems that I had have really helped. It's a genuine shock at first, but it gets much easier.
-Lizzy F. (AKA :I-love-my-garden from Hillary's forum)
PS: If you're interested, I can send you some questions called "Reading Yourself from Rereading Your Diary." They're from one of my journaling books and they help me process things when I reread my old journals. If you want them just message me through the forum.
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