Recording

I was just lying here listening to my old mini cassette tapes from when I was 12 years of age. I was reluctant to write this and in truth I still am, because I think it just re-hit me how deep who I am really is. It seems every day I am getting by and I’ve forgotten that feeling I used to have where I longed to document every moment of my life in photos, videos, recordings, writings, and drawings, I so wanted to make my person a dent in some form, something to be delved into, something to be remembered, though I never felt like I would leave. And I think I just remembered how much I still long to be awesome. All ‘ace’ jokes aside I truly do still feel that longing in my heart to truly stand out as something great if even to one individual, to be discovered with joy, to be looked into as if I was the most important thing on earth to them, a child perhaps, maybe my own, or just someone who took great admiration for me and turned it into a journey to discover me to my core. To review the recordings of my girl-child days when I was so often alone in my room, but so care free and entertained in my world of fluent imagination, to gaze upon my drawings from the time I first started drawing to the most recent drawing as each told a story, each had something to say about it, to read my writings from my first story in 5^th grade to my darker poems of a broken hearted high school girl and unto the recorded struggles of my young adult love life and almost desperate intellectual essays on my faith that has so grown over the years and evolved into my own, and to look upon videos that visually illustrated the girl who’s voice you can hear over her tapes, who’s hands and heart wrote every word I have written, the face of al the photos I took alone or with friends… and I realize…I may never have anyone in the world who will completely long to know me right to my very core. Sure, I’ll find a man who I’ll marry and who will treasure me, but I’m not so assured that he will long to desperately capture every inch of who I am from the time I began to explore my own imagination to the time we met. The truth is, and I say this with the most honest heart possible and all conceit aside, I really do think I am awesome. I’ve always felt like I had so much to share and there was so much I wanted people to understand and see as I understood and saw. I’ve always wanted someone to pull completely into my world, to submerge them in the fantasy realm and imagination and creativity I’ve seen… Sometimes it seemed so beautiful in my world and I felt lonely would I realized no one seemed to understand what I could see. How did I lose that..? How did I become a typical adult going day to day, how did I forget how cool I am? Sure, I talk about being the ‘ace’ and how good of a woman I will be to the right man (and often the wrong men) but in retrospect how did I forget my fantasy world? But the real question is do I really want to remember it? Because if I do I will eventually come to rediscover that no one else can or will…experience it with me, no one will understand how I see…Being so different from people…it’s great really, but…it can get lonely, because people so often won’t see it through my eyes. So am I blessed or cursed to be so…different..? I sang on a stage at 6 years of age in church. I was alone in my room with Veggie Tales songs and my fathers’ tape recorder. I played Link as I battled the evil forces in Hyrule and later reenacted my own stories with these and many other characters with my best friend Hope at church or at Ms. Linda’s. I sat in the Kaffie Middle school library during lunch reading a tale that fascinated me. I got ahold of my parent’s camera and began a series of video tapes first at the age of 11 onto 17. I was sitting at a high school desk drawing sad pictures and writing sad poems of the loss of my first love. Then there seemed to be a gap as I went to work and simply came home for about a year of so. Suddenly I’m on a stage in an abundantly form fitting dress and stiletto heels performing classic songs I never even thought of before, men suddenly adoring me when all through my schooling years I was rarely noticed if ever that. All these stages and so many more were all beacons to say “Creative!” and now, here I sit, hoping so that the recent guitarist I’ve added to my life will create something with me to further my adventure of creativity through this earthly realm. The last time I remember being happy day by day was when although alone I was 15. My heart had never been broken, I didn’t know real pain or true emotion, I had so much at my disposal being too young to work, I was still a child and as long as I had something to document that I was happy. Michael Jackson and Zelda were my life. I had drawn a box full of memories, stories, or cartoonish depictions of events that had actually occurred in my family or friend life, and my recording material was flourishing. And just like that I realize I really have not changed so much. My hair has changed in dramatic ways. My heart has been broken and I have been in love. And my heart has been mended and I personally decided to meet with Jesus. But other than that there is virtually nothing new under my sun. I am still following the same path I did before, only the recordings are less silly, more serious. I write poetry, lyrics. I write essays. I sing songs in public view. My name is known by more people now than it has ever been known. Goodnight Avenue exposed me to a world that I have never known before. Men now seem to notice and appreciate me. At work I am attracting and known. Among my close friends I am the key that seems to hold the sphere together. Suddenly I’ve achieved a recognition that I never had before as a teenage girl or even a young woman at 20. I have had three important males in my life, all of which were not made for me. I have had a relationship with a man in a position I never dreamed I would have any kind of relationship with. And I have been involved with someone who was once my manager at work. I am adored when before I was barely noticed, and I am pursued although none of whom have and do pursue me are likely my matches. Everything is so different now, yet I am still that same 10 year old girl wearing those same blue shorts, with the sheep shirt from Travis Baptist, same socks bunched up, sitting on my bean bag in the corner of my room while listening to Veggie Tales and recording my dialogue into my recorder. I remember for a good two weeks or so that image being in my head was the happiest thing on earth to me. At times I couldn’t wait to get home from Ella Barnes Elementary just to run up the stairs and sit on my bean bag alone with my recorder and felt Larry the cucumber. But perhaps my oldest memory of a partner after my brother got too old to hang with lil’ sis was Scaley- my felt snake. I must have made at least 5 of him after losing the original. I made him in Children’s Church Sunday morning. Little did my creative arts Sunday school teacher know she was introducing to me an almost life-long childhood companion that morning. That is what used to be the world to me, a little felt snake with google eyes and coke can tabs to adorn his tale. All these memories seem to be just flooding back to me, all because I couldn’t sleep and decided to listen to only a few minutes of a mini tape I recorded as a 12 year old girl. And I can’t help, but wonder…when did I stop talking to myself? When did I forget that I have often been the best company I have kept? And when did Link become simply a memory instead of my first and last thought as a girl going through puberty? When did I forget the importance it was to carefully document every part of my life even though I’ll probably be the only one to ever care? What will happen to all my recordings audio, visual, pictures, writings, and drawings when I leave this world? Will the Lord truly not let me take them with me? Because although I know He was always there and is the only One who knows every desire my heart ever had to share myself with everyone I’d sure love to go through everything with Him anyway. Because I know He’ll be fascinated and at last my wish, the very reason I have kept all these things that tell the story of who Desiree` Magee is and was will not have been wished and hoped for in vain.

-          Desiree` Magee, age 23