journal found

I've been through these boxes 3 times at least in the last year. Never saw it until now, this seminal moment.

What I have done in the last year? Counseling to work through and better understand relationship habits, issues, problems, and especially repetitions. The greatest loss from Truck theft last summer were my journals, and especially in this emotional work. I have a horrid memory and was afraid I might be making stuff up, creating a story in my head to support hypotheses. Not because I wanted to, but because that's how my mind works. At least I'm not alone:

"I would concede now that all these things were fabrications based on stories I'd heard. Memory is a complicated thing... I clearly remember things I haven't seen, sometimes things that never happened. And draw a blank on the things I've lived through." Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver

Somehow, in miraculous revealing, a blue suede snap cover journal unearthed itself yesterday. Spans summer 1999 to end of July, 2003. Many other journals spiraled off of this one in that time period- travel and tangents- but this is the mother of them all, particularly in regards to relationships. I couldn't even open it yesterday and have just been poking around today, almost not believing its existance.

But what I've read so far confirms; it's what I've been thinking all along. Absolutely trippy to see handwriting of the formal self spelling it out in real time. And trippy to see I have been pretty constant in my core self, core values, and even writing style.

What to do with it? Well, read it. Pull out important passages that speak to me now, including quotes like the one above, that still ring into my soul. Maybe post some here. Then... perhaps... burn it.

A woman at the UU church told me at the end of my last service that she had a revelation: those lost journals were burned karma. I should rejoice in their exit. I worry about karma in a deep superstitious way and truly feel I'll be repaid for my shitty relationship habits, probably by getting my heart broken in the most painful way. So this was good news. But here's the motherload of it all, resting underneath my elbow on this kitchen table. The issue of moving on from the past has been coming up repeatedly in the last month. Would sacrificing this artifact do a thing to help with that? No se. As Thich Naht Hahn said in Living Buddha, Living Christ (my first reading of him and another relic of this old friend):

"The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment."

I have some reading to do.