1Interestingly enough, this is going to be the first writing I post on FictionPress, and it's going to be about old work. Curious. I've been planning on doing this for some time, but this is actually the first time I'm going through with it. So, old writing.
Have you ever written something that you were immensely proud of, be it for school or for a writing website online or just for the heck of it? Took the parchment the work was displayed on or opened the window on the computer to where it was and just took a moment to admire it, your heart swelling with pride as you gaze at it in wonder, scarcely believing you were the one who wrote it. In your mind, never again would such a masterpiece be written by you, and if it was, they would be completely different. If you have posted it up online or had shown it to someone, you expect him or her to say it was great, because how can it not be? Eventually though, your initial excitement over your achievement would slow to a stop and though in the back of your mind and even deep inside your heart, you are still as proud of the writing as before, it no longer was at the forth front of your mind.
A few weeks, perhaps several of months or even a year passed, since you had last gazed at that wonderfully written piece of work of yours. One day, maybe while searching for something else of yours, or even suddenly just randomly receiving a burst of remembrance and/or nostalgia, you came across that same writing piece you were oh-so proud of. Flashes of emotions lightly skimmed the surface of your heart and although you can recall what you have felt as you wrote and completed the work, you could no longer personally feel it.
Perhaps it was a weekend when you have found your old work once again and you had plenty of time on your hand, or perhaps you were in reality extremely busy. But whichever circumstance you were in, you decided to sit down, right there and then, open the file to where you have found the aged writing, and began to read.
Time ticked away, unrelenting to whatever feeling or feelings overcame you, as your eyes skimmed over the text, the manifestation of the thoughts and worlds and characters and creatures in your head, the very evidence of your youth and perhaps childhood. How long have it been, until you at last reached to the last page, the last word, the last letter, and/or the last punctuation, be it a common period, question mark or exclamation point.
At that moment, maybe you would have let out a breath you didn't realized you've held, and glanced at the writing you had just finished reading incredulously. You recalled the immense pride you felt for that work then, and could scarcely believe it was the very same writing. What is this? might be a thought that runs through your mind, as your eyes unwittingly and subconsciously drift back to your old writing, like it was some kind of horrid thing, so disgusting yet fascinating and you just couldn't help as your eyes returned to it.
It was everything you recalled, from the shape of your childish scrawl to the style of your writing. Yet. And yet it was completely different. Whereas it had once brought upon a feeling of immense pride, now all you felt was disbelief. Was this what you have been ever-so proud of, you wondered, because reality was that now all you thought of the writing as was terrible. Terrible, terrible, and terrible.
But how could that be?
The writing remained the same as always, continually true to how it had been shaped and organized. It wasn't the writing or text that had changed. It was you, and as the realization came upon you, you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Was it too dramatic to do either one, or was even considering that someone may shed tear or spare some sort of emotion for a piece of writing, something you yourself had written back in your youth nonetheless, too silly to think about?
But the significance of this event had never truly lied with whether the aged writing was worth the tear, nor was it in any relevance to any sort of writing at all. No, the true concern was that while the writing had remained ever truly and faithfully the same, you had changed, and it was the loyalty (once again, is it silly to name any humane characteristic to an inanimate object?) of the text that caused it to be no longer worthy of us.
Humans are such capricious things, are they not, fickle little ones that forever change, and those that do not are those that are perhaps the ones most hurt in the end.
Years later, as I return to this website and gaze at this writing, would my reaction be the same as the 'you' I've written about? And with all honesty and certainty, I believe the answer is yes.