Hey there.

Who have I been these past 7 years?

Whoever I was, there was a chance I was never going to be able to access her again. The server for my blog crashed a few months ago, and along with it could have gone a ton of writing that was my lifeblood, my fingerprints of the moment, my access to who I’ve been.

Spoilers: I got the writing back. Breathe. It’s all here now. Feel free to dig it up and make merciless fun of my melodrama (whether it’s from 2011 or 2018). Compliments and other comments are welcome too! While I can’t guarantee I won’t delete anything, I will try to be kinder to my writing.

But imagine. Put yourself in the shoes of me with a crashed blog. It’s been a strange 7 years, and I’m finding myself less and less capable of accessing who I was before now. It’s been deleted, all that writing, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to access it again. My roots, my past, the stuff I’ve forgotten and I don’t know how, because it’s me, it’s all me.

Which of my past selves did I care to preserve? I wouldn’t destroy any of them voluntarily, the same way I can’t throw out the ribbons I get with gifts or receipts from a night of adventure, the same way they might be useful someday. I can’t quash their potential. But what if they’re taken from me? The server crashed, my oldest blog posts might all be gone, the ribbons and the papers are in a potentially fatal fire. Do I go in to save them?

Technically, of course, my techie brother is the firefighter – only he can save the site. So, do I want him to? With my past selves in danger, do I want to leave them to vanish? Things are just things, sure. But these words are parts of me, ones I let loose at moments that necessitated creative, colorful, twisted release. And they held on to me as they went, stretching me in all their directions, defining my shape. Poems, prose, scripts, late night thoughts on the stained pink carpet of my old house, the writing from a high school summer program that made me want to start this blog – they share my DNA. In many ways, they’ve mutated it (X-Men, here I come).

Yet not all of them are pretty, or kind, or original. Some of them are a good example of a kid who thought she could write forever, a kid who would have never anticipated an extended period of writer’s block during one of the most intense years of her life. A kid who loved without being able to look love in the face and discern what it is and is not. A kid who experienced pain without burns, a bonfire constructed by an iPhone screen that could be taken out for warmth or illumination and shut off when convenient.

And as I worked to salvage whatever writing I could from Word docs or website caches, the possibility that these parts of me could be lost forever grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “WAKE UP!” It pointed an accusing finger at the piles of posts. “Can you identify these past selves?? Do you care if they go?”

It took me a while to answer, but I’ve decided that I would care. I do care, and the truth is, it’s in my best interest to care. There’s a great quote from Joan Didion from her essay “On Keeping a Notebook” that puts it best:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

And now that this blog’s back up (thanks, brother!), I’m choosing to nod at my past selves. To the versions of me with the nose that didn’t quite fit her face, to the pretentious and passionate rambler, to the one with the sharp senses of humor and darkness – we’re not that different, you and I. We don’t need to have a long conversation, but hey there. Let’s move forward.