going for penitential service last night at SVDP stirred up several thoughts in my head. seeing the little kids go for their confessions made me remember my own confessions of yesteryear. back when the sins of the child were still the petty little wrongs and not the heavy burdens of unforgiveness or anger. a child is like a blank slate, but after a while even chalkboards don't clean off as well as they used to when they were brand new. the coloured chalk starts to leave their chalkmarks on the board and the dust settles there, for good it seems. children are like that, the blemishes and hurts initially can be dusted away, but after prolonged writing, the chalk won't clean off as cleanly and the board's perpetually marked with the faint writings of before. i'd do anything to throw my cares to the wind and leave them all behind, i don't want to carry around unnecessary bags of rubbish. if i knew how to, i'd do that in a jiffy and live each day without excess memories cluttering up my life. i think memories ought to be locked up and the key thrown away and the box stuffed under some dark bed because their ghosts haunt me ever so often and leave me feeling so lost.

it's no use lamenting about how i want to be a child again, i know, but i wish childhood didn't slip by me so quickly, leaving me in this semi-grownup, semi-girlhood state. i'm neither little girl still nor woman yet, so what does that make me? somedays i wake up and think i'm an adult and that i can face an adult world with all it's troubles fearlessly, but other days i wake up and just want my mom or dad to take me in their arms again and kiss my tears away and tell me everything's going to be okay and for me to actually believe it when they say that things are gonna be fine.

i found this poem in a book i borrowed from the library last week when dad was on leave.


from I Remember

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy.

THOMAS HOOD

3:42 PM;