Back in the fall of 96, i was in my second year of college at Anne Arundel Community College, or as i had affectionately dubbed it "any asshole can come". I had graduated from highschool in 1995 towards the top of my class and was admitted into all of the colleges i applied to and even received scholarships. However as i was paying my own way thru school, and the scholarships weren't enough to cover it and i couldn't get financial aid because my parents made too much, AACC was my only option.

It was during my third semester where I had a huge break between my classes and discovered the computer labs. The school's computer lab was so ancient. The computes were these beasts of a machine, huge monitors with green text, windows no where to be found lol. It was during one of these breaks one day, that my friend Julie and I decided to try out this internet chat group called IRC. We joined a chat room for people aged 17-25 and began chatting. This was a very popular and busy chatroom, and i began talking to a group of people who appeared to be friends. One of these people went by the screen name "Kelsey". "Kelsey" and I started chatting and we seemed to have a lot in common and so we exchanged emails. Over the next few weeks we exchanged emails and would arrange times to meet up in IRC to chat. We had been chatting for over a month, when he asked if he could call me for the first time, and i said yes. He would call me about every night and we continued to chat daily online and email each other. As weird as it was, i was having sincerely strong feelings for him, and him for me. Three months after we first met online in that chatroom, "Kelsey" drove 10 hrs from Canada to Maryland to spend almost two weeks with me. (If you haven't figured it out yet, "Kelsey" is my hubby).

We had an amazing two weeks together, although it ended abruptly and ugly due to my parents discovering we had been having sex together...they wouldn't even let me say good-bye to him in person. Depsite that, once he got back to canada we continued chatting online and talking nightly. During his first visit with me he had brought me a beautiful ruby ring and promised himself to me, we were in love. We were able to visit usually every 2 months and 5 months after that first time that we had met in person, we were engaged. A year after that we were married.

We lived apart from the time we met online in Nov 96, till I moved up to Canada in May 98. One of us would arrange a visit every few months for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, but for the most part our relationship was carried on thru emails, phone calls and mail. It was an incredibly long and hard road, but we made it.

The other night i was going thru a box that i keep all my really personal things in that i want to keep. Inside i had a rose from the night Peter asked me to marry him. I have my two journals packed full of poetry. There were four papers i had written in college that i had poured my heart and soul into. All the letters and cards that Peter sent me during our "dating" are kept in that box. There are are also cards and notes from my kiddos now too. And at the bottom of the box, buried underneath everything else, are three journals. The first journal begins just after i first met Peter online and the last one ends about a month after I moved up to Canada. I read thru all three the other night. It took me several hours, and while reading thru them, i could remember exactly how i felt when i had written those entries. How in love and happy i was when the two of us were together, and how miserable i was when we had been apart from each other for far too long. Reading them made me laugh at times and other times blush because it seemed i wanted to commit every detail to memory if you know what i mean LOL.

After i was done reading them, i buried them back underneather everything and had Peter put them back up on the high shelf in my room, that even i can't reach. Afterwards though i got to thinking about those journals and what should become of them. They aren't exactly things i want my children to ever read. There are details (those blushing details) that no one should ever read again lol, but there are also some less then stellar moments of mine and my parents that i don't want to share with anyone. So what does one do with journals from their past as well as letters (I'm sure i don't want anyone reading the letters Peter and I exchanged during that time)?? Do you take one last leisurely walk thru the pages, soaking it all in and then put it all out with the rest of the trash? Or do you keep it up on a high shelf, or stuffed in a box on top of your closet forever and hope that once you pass and your children are going thru your belongings that they don't take the time to peruse your written words? I'm such a sentimentalist that I want to hang on to every last piece of our past together, but at the same time, i think i am okay with knowing that those words and exchanges we've shared are stored away in the very fibre of my soul and heart and that i don't need to hold on to the actual physicallity of the paper. Saying and thinking that of course is so much easier then actually doing it though.
So do you hold on to those things or let them go??



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