Confessing - Julie Farrar

A small black rock, polished smooth by the rubbing of the waves on the beach, sits in a small ring box in the drawer next to my bed. It had been placed carefully in my hand, a memento of the favorite place of one I had thought was my soulmate. In another room in a satchel filled with letters from my mother and grandmother, a random assortment of birthday cards, and cryptic news clippings my father sent me at college are one letter that says I’m missed, a handwritten Christmas message on a 3X5 notecard, written by the right one at the wrong time. A scrap of paper with a work schedule scribbled in still-familiar handwriting. The Parker T-ball Jotter (blue ink, burgundy casing) that has been the only pen I’ve used for writing important things. The first I bought lasted ten years because it had more endurance and smooth ways than the man who introduced me to it. I return to it again and again. If I ever make anything of this writing thing, then he’ll have something to do with it because he taught me the sensuous interface of paper and writing implement.

Dorm rooms, apartment to apartment, house to house. They’ve been packed and unpacked, moved from place to place as my life progressed. Insignificant enough, they’ll be casually tossed aside by family when I’m gone. Like the more primal cultures that believe the spirit is stolen when they’re photographed, I keep bits of my history protected from the light of the modern confessional culture. They’re not a trail of breadcrumbs so that I can find my way back to those times and places. These small talismans make me who I am, but I have no compulsion to share their stories with the man I’ve slept next to for 25 years. Something keeps me from peeling back all of my layers and letting him know me like the back of his hand. I preserve a little something for myself.