Dear Diary

Chapter 1

"Ain't it funny how a melody, can bring back a memory."

"Yes.  Yes it is," Leia thought as she was driving around to no where in particular.  She just need to clear her mind of all the trauma she'd been through.  What made it difficult was that as she drove, she saw reminders everywhere.  So when the words of Clint Black poured our of her truck speakers, it hit her harder than usual.  Tears poured from her brown eyes, and she pushed her hair back with her left hand as she kept it on her forehead, elbow on the door as she drove.  "I'll find a way to move on. But. . .how?"

As she pulled into the garage of her newly acquired townhouse, she just looked straight ahead, blankly, trying to come up with something, and fast.  Instead, she shook her head and turned he Chevy Colorado off, and hit the button to close her garage door.  Exiting her pickup, she walked around the front of it to her right to go inside, her wavy brown locks falling out of the scrunchie she had loosely holing her hair back for the wind.  when she tried to catch it, she bumped into a few boxes, and they toppled over, spilling the contents all over the floor.  "Oh fuck.  Damn it."

She opened the door that led inside and scurried upstairs to change into jeans and a t-shirt.  She had just driven around after work, and didn't feel like cleaning up the garage in heels and a skirt.

When she went back into the garage and started to pick up the mess she inadvertently made, she moved slowly.  Not because she didn't want to clean it up, but because as she picked the items up, they brought memories back to her.  "Oh my God.  I still have this?"  She was referring to her New Kids On The Block blanket that was at the bottom of the first box.  "Lord, my room was covered with Joey.  Those damn blue eyes of his.  Ahhhhh, so much for being thirteen."

She picked up a few more items, magazines, books, a cassette tape that bore the name Michael on it.  Her stomach turned.  "WHY do I still have this?" and she reached down and saw the dried corsage he had given her for homecoming in high school.  "Oh Lord girl, get rid of this shit.  You've moved so far beyond Michael.  High school is over.  You're thirty-two."  And with that, she tossed the tape and the dead flower into the trash.  "So long, dick," shaking her head and feeling a smile come to her face.

She thought she had everything picked up but then she noticed something just under the passenger side front tire.  It was a small book.  She reached under her truck to grab it.  "Oh. My. God," she paused, "I forgot all about this thing."  Leia found her old diary.

Leia took the book and went into her house.  She plopped herself onto her couch, turned on the tv for noise, and started thumbing through her diary.  Judging by the handwriting, she guessed it had to be about the sixth grade when she started it.  "Good Lord.  Was life really this, childish?" she thought as she saw entries about who wasn't talking to who, who thought who was cute, and then she stumbled upon these words:  "no matter what I do, everyone sees me as a nerd.  How come no one likes me?  It's not my fault I'm smart.  And why does no one stick up for me?"

"Wow," she said out loud to no one, "I really had a poor opinion of myself."  She flipped through some more pages, noticing her handwriting change.  And some silly signatures that mostly consisted of adding Joey's last name to her own.  "Leia McIntyre.  Oh, we were so goofy back then."

As she turned the pages to her childhood, she realized something.  The writings in her diary always started when something was going wrong in life and would go until she found some sort of happiness.  "That's it," she thought as she closed the book and went to her kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, "I should go back to keeping a diary.  I mean everyone needs some form of therapy.  Maybe that's what mine is."