library

 two years pass.

september 15 2006

September 15 2006
I’m having a lot of trouble processing this journal. This shouldn’t exist, and yet... here it is. This is a real object and I’m writing in it. I was at work, I’ve been working at the library for over a year now, and I was putting away books from the book drop at the end of the day... and there was this black book at the bottom of the return pile that caught my eye. It had no markings but had a lock on it. I was positive I had never seen it before in my life but... I was overcome with this intense mix of emotions when I held it, like a hidden door in the library of my mind had suddenly appeared and someone was knocking from the other side. And I’ve felt this knocking before too, but in that moment it was the loudest it’s ever been. It felt so oddly familiar, like recognizing someone random on the street that you somehow know you have a deep personal connection with. With trembling hands I stashed it in my backpack and biked home as fast as I could, my heart racing. Mom was still out at her Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and my stepdad was asleep on the couch. I ran into my room and froze as this intense feeling of deja vu smacked me in the face. I heard an inner voice coming from behind that door in my mind. Whispers. It told me to look in my closet for something. Something hidden. I searched around for a good half hour and found a removable panel in the wall. There was a box inside the wall filled with various things, some more familiar to me than others.

september 15 2006

These were my old toys, this was my secret hiding place. The door in my mind was banging louder and louder. And then I saw it. Inside a small plastic bag, there was a key tied to a band made of the same material as the book. I knew instantly that this is what I was looking for. I unlocked the book and as soon as I saw the inscription that said it belonged to me, the door in my mind flew open and out poured a torrent of memories that flooded my head like a dam had burst. Behind that door was a whole other library containing a forgotten life that I never even knew I had lived. This was MY journal, and I had chronicled my life in it for many years. I’ve been staying up all night frantically devouring page after page, entry after entry and this missing history of my life is revealing itself before my eyes. As I’m writing this now, my head is spinning and I’m still drowning in this surge of memory, but it’s the horror of what I’m reading that’s suffocating me. A group of supernatural shadow people, a business monster, a secret organization of wizard cultists, a magic journal at Grandpa’s, a mystery medication I’m still taking, a mountain of lies from my Mom... in an instant my life has turned upside down... this is all far too much to take in. It’s now 6 AM and it’s my 18th birthday, but it feels like I’ve been reborn into hell. Luckily, this is just one of my terrible vivid nightmares and I’m going to wake up in the real world soon and laugh and laugh at such a ridiculous dream.