I’ve had a journal for most of my life. My first real journal began when I was 15 and my life went haywire and I landed flat on my head. It’s kind of fun/sad to read now because I see that girl who was sooooo so messed up and I still hurt for her. But I wrote to work out the mess in my brain; I wrote to find some reason, some answer to my unhappiness. Sadly, the answers that I found were wrong but it did placate me at the time.
And so I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote some more. And then I burned it all. How could I not? Most of it was demonic musings of a psycho teenage girl and then worse musings of a woman on the edge of … of… anyway, I could never let someone see the mad ravings! Probably because, if you read what was actually written, you would see: Boo hoo! Why doesn’t (insert name here) want me? If you read between the lines, however, you would see: Help me stop hating myself!
So I periodically threw the books in the fire. People said that I would regret it – and they were right to a degree – but I still wouldn’t want someone to read them after I was gone and think that I was that person. Not many people are able to find meaning beyond the words. But I continued to write because I found it an outlet that I could use to vent about all of the bad, and sometimes good, things that I was living through. Then one day I realized that it was causing more problems than it was solving.
I would sit at home alone and write and cry and drink and write and cry. I would then inevitably go send some stupid drunken email to whatever man was currently ruining my life. And then I would feel good… conflict discovered, conflict deleted. And then morning would come. Oooops! I eventually realized that my journals had turned into a way for me to get worked up. Oh, the tears and the frustration and the absolute blah, blah, blah.
However - and this is the reason that we are all here right now - I miss it. I miss writing. I miss recording my life. It’s nice sometimes to go back and see where you were and how far you’ve come and I’ve lost that. I decided that I would like to write again. But – new problem – I don’t live alone anymore. I don’t think that it would be fair to write down all of these personal thoughts and observations and not expect Ian to be curious enough to take a peek. And I really don’t think that I will be writing anything that I wouldn’t want him to see because he knows me better than anyone ever has but there are things that sneak into my brain every so often that he doesn’t need to know.
So, here I sit… here I write. I have a journal that I can pull out whenever and wherever I want (within reason!!), it’s private and I will feel free to be who I am… whoever that might be at any specific time. Hold on… this is gonna be fun!
