Diaries to an Older Me
The Life of One Perpetually Misunderstood and Rejected, 2000 – 2002
by
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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
You know, you never can really know where you’d be in life. I never thought that I’d be 26 and single. Yeah. And I also thought that I’d be a doctor and marry at 28. Boy was I wrong. Life has its ups and downs. I went home. It wasn’t all peaches and cream. One of my little cousins got hit by a car. The ambulance and police came by. One of my other littler cousins fell at a school playground and broke her arm. She has to get it worked on in Chicago. They’re there now. April called yesterday and left a message.
I had a dream about Curtis this past weekend and it seems as if I think about him more often. I wish I could just go on with my life without thinking about marriage, a man, sex, all that. I’m just not content and its high time I became content. My life is not bad. Most of my “problems” are with my family. I guess I tend to try to shut them out and live in my own little bubble. Maybe I feel like they can’t do nothing for me, and they have done things for me. I know that relationships are not based upon what another does for you. I’m not saying that, I’m just saying that, mostly, a while if I wanted something I had to do it or buy it or whatever to obtain it. At times I feel like I’m all alone to fend for myself. I had to learn a lot of things the hard way—experience. Experience is the most expensive teacher.
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About the Book
“Be a good person, and work hard so you don’t have to be like me when you grow up.” That was the mantra drilled into the young, tender, and impressionable mind of Cerah Whitlow (pronounced Sarah). So, that was what she set out to accomplish. Little did she know that the less you know going into it, the more failures you experience. The passion was there, the desire, the drive. However, the know-how was lacking. Faith and religious beliefs played both roles of help and hindrance. The result was a life full of contradictions and the psychological pains that go along with it.
This book is not fiction. These are the journal entries, tear-stained entries, that Cerah used to process her experiences. Not only did she write to get the feelings out, but also she did it so that she wouldn’t have to re-live those mistakes. She did it because she did not want to re-experience rejection, hurt, loss, rape, shame and self-degradation. She wrote it down, documented it, so that she would not forget it. She put them in this book so you would not have to experience those things. She wants you to learn from her mistakes and triumph where she fell short.
About the Author
I’m your typical (I suppose) girl-next-door. Some may describe me as sweet as pie, naïve, quiet, smart, so on and so forth. But who do I say that I am? I’m just like most everybody else—trying to survive. Although, I hope to some day do more than just survive.
I grew up poor, but I didn’t really know it. Of course there were clues, but my family was not extremely poor. My mother and father divorced when I was very young. (I still need to find out about that story.) I lived with my mom and extended family, until they—my aunt, uncles, grandmother, then cousins—moved out leaving me, my mom, and younger half-sister behind. After I moved out to go to college, some of them came back and left again. That house is the cornerstone of the family.
Now, I’m living an adult life. I work with children, go to church, and have my own family. At night, I journal.