Nowadays

Yesterday, when going through what is still in my basement storage, I found this. My poetry collection. 86 pieces. The earliest written by an eleven-year-old me in September 1993, the latest when I was eighteen in November 2000.
 
Many of the poems are childishly simple, with cheap rhymes and poor vocabulary. But others are not. Some are actually very good. It is interesting to go back, read and notice the development in writing over time. I experimented with all aspects of language. I wrote in both Swedish and English. Just as now. And apart from the bold name I gave my selection - "My Words; My Story" - I pride myself as I read. Little wise me.
  
Most of the poems are dedicated to specific people. Therefore, browsing through the pages is a marathon through old relationships: stormy friendships, break-ups, get-back-togethers, passionate crushes, deep loves, failures, curses, real hatreds, commitments. And everything neatly put on paper, organized in words, lines and paragraphs. In free verse or metered. Dated. A hand-me-down of emotions. From me then to me now.
   
The Chinese signs on the back read Strength Happiness Success. I believe I imagined that was somehow the key to it all. To life. It takes strength to reach happiness; happiness to reach success. I was not totally off, was I?