Upon Spring cleaning my room this weekend, I stumbled across 6 or about 8 or 9 books of letters I had written while I was 11 -13 years old. They are basically a diary, except they weren't written to the anonymous "diary" person, but addressed to Shesha, and even titled "Letters." I read large portions out to my sisters, mom and Andy, who laughed hysterically, aww'ed at the sad parts, and listened intently to my "animated" storytelling. I had truely forgotten what a hard time that was in my life. As we get older, we seem to minimized the issues we had earlier because the present ones seem far more overwhelming, but in reality, I don't think I ever went through a harder time emotionally. My first pet EVER (my cat, Shesha) was hit by a car and died when I was sleeping over a friends house. I was very emotionally attached to that cat, so that affected me big time. Soon after, that very same friend (my best friend since I had moved there) dumped me, along with EVERY other person that had been friends with us, because I had befriended a girl they didn't like. I switched school, fell into a group of not-so-good kids, and experienced my first ideas of mutual liking with boys (what I called "love" but obviously wasn't). Overalll the books are emotional, personal, humourous, happy, depressing, and even shocking.

So my project this summer, inspired by my mother, is to go through these letters (and try to find the missing 2 or 3), and create illustrations to accompany them. I'm really excited about it. Delving into my past and encountering so many forgotten memories has already been quite emotionally strenuous, yet exciting. I hope this comes out good, or I'll be a it sad. I'll post some of them up here....depending on how personal it gets, but we will see.