A life on paper

It is the chronicle of my life, documenting the ups and downs, the major tragedies and catharses as well as the smaller and seemingly meaningless everyday occurrences.
I’ve kept a journal since I was 11-years-old and recently decided to dig all of the dusty old books out of storage and read through all of them starting at the beginning.
Reading through my life reminded me once again of how grateful I am that I took the time to write it all down. I admit that I do enjoy reading over certain positive experiences and in a sense, reliving them. But it’s the difficult experiences, the pain and the adversity that I can truly benefit not only from writing about, but also reading it again.
As I read through my own trials and tribulations, I watch my handwriting change from the neat printing, round letters marching across the page, to the haphazard and frantic cursive, to what it is today: a slightly less chaotic and more legible cursive.
Though less obvious at first glance than the change in the handwriting is the change in the subject matter. In junior high, all I ever wrote about was the boy I currently had a crush on or what CD I wanted to buy when I got my allowance, stupid, shallow pubescent fluff. My entries from that time were often misspelled, written in pink or purple ink and punctuated with exclamation marks and doodles of hearts and stars. I read over them now and while I marvel at what a dumb kid I was back then, I can’t help but smile as I feel a nostalgic tug on my heartstrings.
As I grew older, my entries got a lot darker. Gone was the superficial seventh grader with her sparkly lip gloss and silly daydreams and in her place was a severely depressed teenager who was terrified of what was inside of her own head and used writing as a way to get it out.
Those journal pages are stained with tears and sometimes torn form my pen gouging into the paper so hard. It was during those times that I am now eternally grateful that I had an outlet, something to pour my tormented thoughts into. Who knows what I would’ve done otherwise?
While all of my journals and the history they contain are precious to me, it is the ones with the anguished and hopeless entries and cathartic journeys that are among my most cherished possessions. I know now there was indeed and light at the end of that very dark and narrow tunnel.
I don’t write in my current journal as much as I would like. Sometimes it just seems like more work on top of everything else. But I always regret not taking the time to do it, when another momentous event passes by without being properly documented or a bad day just gets worse with no relief.
Though we may not see each other that often and our relationship can be a bit strained at times, my journal remains one of my closest friends, one with whom I know I can always be completely honest and share my deepest darkest secrets and who I can always trust to be nonjudgmental and unconditional in return.

It opened so many doors for me... until it closed its own.

Since moving out of Fresno County five years ago, I haven’t really kept up with its local news very much. Out of sight out of mind. Every so often my mother will send me a newspaper clipping or give me some other tidbit of information I may find interesting: my favorite abandoned building downtown is being refurbished, one of my old school friends got married.

Sometimes these bits of news are uplifting and sometimes they’re depressing. Things change when you move away. Life goes on without you and that’s inevitable. But never have any of my mother’s updates hit me as hard as when she told me that the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science had shut down. It was like losing a dear friend, though admittedly one I hadn’t seen in several years.

It was the place of so many happy childhood memories and even several happy teenage memories. It was where I saw my first Georgia O’Keefe painting and my first Rembrandt. It was where I would develop my lifelong love of Impressionism after seeing a painting by Claude Monet.

Almost every year, my elementary school class would take a field trip to the museum. I remember going to the “Dinosaurs Alive!” exhibit and marveling at the amiatronic giants or the “Nature’s Fury” exhibit and experiencing the earthquake and hurricane simulators.

As I got older, I began going to more and more exhibits, once a Rock n Roll exhibit featuring the works of Andy Warhol and Annie Leibovitz among others. One time an exhibit of artifacts from Imperial Russia, including the crown worn by the Empress Alexandra (mother of the famous and ill-fated Anastasia) during her coronation.

The museum had been going through some financial struggles the past few years, especially after a major renovation to the historic building went way over budget. Desperate attempts to gain support failed and the museum finally had to close its doors forever, even going as far as auctioning off all the furnishings and pieces from its permanent collections.

While the auction may have been a wonderful opportunity for a lucky buyer to own a piece of history or a treasured work of art, it doesn’t even begin to make up for the loss of the museum.

It may not have been as grand as the Louvre or even the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it was my museum. I came of age wandering its galleries and gift shop. While other kids my age were celebrating their birthdays at pizza parlors or the skating rink, I wanted to spend my special day at “The Met”, as locals affectionately called it.

Growing up in a small town an hour and a half from Fresno, I never had much of a chance to get out and see the world. In a way, The Met brought the world to me. I never would have seen these items, these extraordinary works of art and pieces of history had there not been a museum for them to come to.

With arts programs being cut from schools across the nation and museums now shutting down, why is nothing being done to stop it? The government will give a multibillion dollar bailout to the auto industry but when a struggling art museum is forced to close down because of the failing economy, no one bats an eye.

It makes me sad to think of all the elementary school children and all the brooding teenagers that will miss out on all that culture and beauty, but it makes me even sadder to think that I’ll miss out on it now too. Never again will I walk the halls of that wonderfully old building that oozed history from its very walls (built in 1922 and once the home of the Fresno Bee). Never again will I climb the stairs to the mezzanine level wondering what marvelous discoveries lie waiting for me just around the corner.

I think of all those nameless, faceless kids who will miss out on all that now and it breaks my heart. They may never know what they’re missing, but I’ll know.