10 April 06
Letters From My Adolescence
In boarding school, in Derbyshire, we were corralled every week to write letters home. I enjoyed writing them, I think. I know I wrote often, more often than the weekly corralling.
Looking back on these letters now, if I can bear to (oh you’re not supposed to READ them, says my mother, who had handed them to me in bound packets the week before), I see a lot of experimentation: inks, papers, hands. Not much experimentation with what I said, because it was all in what I DIDN’T say (this was a co-ed boarding school, it was the seventies).
Am I that person, unrecognizable? Yes. I’m thinking of ways to contain her, this adolescent so frightened of authenticity. Collage with paint over it, my current handwriting, different calligraphic hands.
Another project. Like I need any more of those…
- What gets me about my old letters (and even that journal I intend to incinerate if I can just figure out how, with no fireplace) is how pitifully hard I tried to say the right thing or to dress up reality to make myself seem interesting or worthwhile. I never actually lied, but I hardly ever just told the plain truth. Role-playing as much out of fear as of standard adolescent trying-on of . . . everything, really. SO uncomfortable!— Doc Rock 11. April 2006, 08:53 Link
- I remember reading the letters I had sent to my parents from (single-sex) boarding school. In the rereading of them some 40 years later I was amazed at what I DIDN’T say. I, too, didn’t tell my parents what I really thought about this miserable situation. They wanted me to have a great education, but at what I thought, at that time, was an enormous cost. Not economic but emotional. But Jesus, I was so nice about the whole grim situation. I wonder what would have happened if I had spoken my mind?— Susan 11. April 2006, 19:50 Link
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