I am a sentimental kind of person. I love to reminisce, even though it usually gets me weepy and yearning to either revisit or even relive those past times. Not to mention, thanks to my romantasising even the worst of them, if enough time has passed, there’s almost no point in the past that I wouldn’t go back to for at least a moment. I mean, looking back on chat logs between an ex-boyfriend and I about whether we would get back together… I can’t remember exactly how I was feeling back at that moment other than what was said in those conversations and what paths we took, I’m thinking now why didn’t I? Reminiscing, especially if I have physical aids, is dangerous for me

Considering I found logs burned onto a CD that go back as far as 2000(!!!!), there’s also the fact of how I just … typed. 13 years old and I definitely had the lazy grammar and bad spelling ¹ that is hallmark of that age group. Not only that, but I tried to be “creative” in my bad typing. I used “yu” instead of “you”… A LOT. That’s hard to read. I feel flush with embarrassment the way I conveyed myself in some conversations. However, I can definitely see the progression I made since I have logs up to 2004. I definitely got better, let me tell you. Hell, I don’t even need these chat logs to display how awful I was with typing in the past. I have LiveJournals that show it even worse!

Now, there’s nothing like finding a conversation saved for a purpose. Lord knows the logs I have saved aren’t all the conversations I’ve had over those years. One such conversation was as casual as they come between a guy friend of mine and this friend actually happened to be an ex². It started out unassuming and quite casual and out of nowhere, he apologizes. A simple couple of lines of an apology for having acted like an “ass” for the couple of years after we broke up. There’s little I remember about our relationship back then except certain feelings of memories, but I do remember after we broke up, I appeared to be the most annoying person on the planet to him and he made it be known. Considering this apology took place years after he’d outgrown that and we were on good terms, it took me by surprise. However, I don’t appreciate it any less, especially since I still have record of it and can stumble upon it at various random points in my life and be reminded of that moment.

Then there are the more dangerous logs that I’ve kept that are more negative or shameful than anything. Inappropriate exchanges with boys, people telling me how I ruined them³… I really can’t recall what was going through my mind when I decided to burn these logs to a disc that made me think it was a good idea to do so with these particular logs. This is where I wax philosophical… While I go through my life thinking I don’t make that much of an impact on people or in their life, perhaps I kept them to remind myself of the contrary. Though, with this particular person, my memory and certain other logs remind me that they were overly dramatic, even for most other teenagers I knew at the time.

Perhaps I should change the title to “dwelling in the past is dangerous”? Well, as long as I just take occasional visits instead of living there, what’s the harm, right?