I was going though some old papers this weekend, filing things away on a quiet Saturday morning, when I came across some of the diaries I kept as I was first moving out here. I used to be really really good at keeping a diary; it was a running commentary on my life. From high school forward, I have a veritable bookshelf’s worth. A from-the-front account, each of them; the diary was a book I’d pull out when I was bored, or frustrated. I always had it on me. It was raw, and real, and true, that writing. I cringe when I read a lot of it. But it was cathartic, and I needed it; it was me, who I was then, and that’s valuable.

I’ve fallen away from diarying lately, and I can’t quite finger why. The last—three? four?—books I’ve had have been stop-and-start, sometimes-carried collections of occasional thoughts. It loses something real when that continuity goes. Some of it is this blog space, sure. But not all of it. As much as I want to be totally real here, and as much as I am, it’s not everything. It can’t be. (Who’d read that?). My last diary, started in earnest on my birthday, has a last entry date of 4th April. That doesn’t seem so long ago … but good god, is it really June already? A day-to-day list of observances, it is not. I miss that. And I wonder if that absence is part of why I feel so overwhelmed anymore.

There’s something very validating to count back the days, to look back at who you really were and who you are; to count forward on feelings rather than real-world logic. Sure, a lot of the ramblings of the me of years past is just sad. A lot of it is painful to read, to see my hopes and loves and fears with the knowledge of where it all ultimately led.

But on balance (and life is nothing if not a balance), to count your days in thoughts, in words on paper, is something of a pleasing endeavor. My diaries aren’t as explosive as they used to be, and I don’t think they would be even if I yielded back to writing every day. That’s part of growing up. Still, there’s something about looking back, remembering, that makes all of the silliness, the randomness, all of the naïve pain worthwhile.

That’s part of the reason I keep archives of this space. A loud and cantankerous contingency of my psyche wants to delete them, those early posts: that anyone can read back and build a story of me is kind of alarming. But it is me, or at least a piece thereof, and there’s something beautifully real to that.

Friday night, I was out to dinner with the three DC girls who have become my lifelines. They’re fabulous, all of them. We’re all just here, thinking our thoughts and dreaming our dreams; ordering another drink while sharing sympathetic sighs for the screaming children at the next table. Offering updates and listening to shared troubles. Friends I can call at 11pm and say, help, I may be making a big mistake, I’m so confused, I don’t even know whether I’m coming or going. Women to talk to, and women who care. Apartments to visit and books to discuss and lend out. E-mails in the day that matter. That kind of thing.

I look back to late May 2008, however, and the story is markedly different.

I’ve lived here for a year and a half, and have no friends to call up for a girly movie night. How is this?, I wrote, nearly a year ago to the day.

Sometimes I don’t really know what drives me to just sit here and wait for life to happen. I want that close Charlotte-Miranda-Samantha-Carrie bond, but I don’t know what makes me think I’ll get it if I just stare, willing the phone to ring.

Reading back now, I really wish I had a day-to-day narrative for tracking, to see the transition more pointedly. For the me of last year to have seen the me of Friday night! Such, such a difference. But a difference I could not have anticipated: it wasn’t the way I thought it would go down at all. If you’d have sat me down then with crayons and a ream of paper and said, hey, draw your future friends, it would have looked nothing like last weekend … and yet, last weekend was positively perfect. I think it’s like that sometimes. You just have to trust that it’s going to happen. You have to let go of your crayoned ideas of what it’s going to look like, and just roll with it. Or something.

I’m trying to apply this to dating, too. I want to look back at this post next year, and be all, ah, look at yourself now, with your fabulous boyfriend that is so not what you expected, yet so utterly perfect. (Or even, I suppose, “your fabulous life.” I’ll not be too picky; if history has taught me anything, it’s that my agendas? Yeah, they basically mean nothing, have no value, are worth net zero in the mystery world of the future).

I’m like that little girl in Miracle on 34th street, right. “I believe.” I believe in the blank pages, and the mystery of the archives I haven’t yet written. I believe in happiness coming when you least expect it. I believe in strange surprises and twists from seeming nowhere that start so small but really, truly change everything. I believe, I believe; I know it’s silly, but I believe.