On journals

I have always been a diary/journal girl.  Every year for Christmas I would get a new diary, and for the next year I would try to write in that diary faithfully every day.  My very first diaries are filled with sentiments along the lines of, “Today I went to Grandma’s house.  I watched Nickelodeon.  It was fun.”  But before long I finally started to progress in my writing capabilities and began to record more intricate thoughts and feelings, and going back to revisit these entries can be a real trip.

I’ll admit it, I was your typical teenage romantic.  I wrote love letters, love poems, and to top it off I wrote it all down in my journals.  I shake my head sometimes at the things I wrote, wishing at times I could go back and tell my teenage self not to sweat the small stuff.  But I guess that’s a part of being a teenager, right?  Any slight shift in the perceived perfectness of our universe obviously means the world is coming to an end.  At least for that day.

But I didn’t just record my thoughts and feelings about boys.  Don’t worry, I wasn’t that superficial.  I wrote about my family, my sports teams, my goals and hopes for the future, as well as my fears.  I poured everything I had into some of those entries and it definitely shows.  The emotions practically leap off the page and it amazes me to see some of these words, to revisit the depth and impact certain experiences had on me.

I still keep a journal, but for some reason I don’t write in it nearly as often as I used to.  I’m not really sure why.  I used to get constant cravings and urges to write in my journal, and while I sometimes still do those cravings don’t come around nearly as often.  But the experience for me has always been so cathartic.  Sometimes I would literally be exhausted after writing a single entry, but I would feel so good at the same time.  I don’t know if it was the act of writing, or the experience of seeing my thoughts down on paper, but my journal has always been the one place where I can be completely honest with myself about what I’m feeling.  Some of the stuff I write in my journal I would never think about posting on this blog, and while I am as honest on here as I can possibly be, I definitely censor myself to a degree.

But not in the journal.  There is no holding back within those pages.  I don’t think I have ever not been honest about what I record because if I lied to myself and about myself in those pages then what really would be the point of the whole exercise?  I feel like the journal and the act of writing in the journal is about getting to the truth.  To seeking out your true thoughts and feelings, regardless of whether they are deemed right or wrong by anyone else.  I’ve always adhered to this philosophy, even if I didn’t necessarily like what I was about to write.

I’m not sure there is an overall point to this post, so let’s just call it a musing.  Even though I don’t pull out my journal every single day, I believe I will always have one on hand.  Sometimes you need that outlet, or a place to record the big moments in your life.  That’s something I have always worried about….that one day I might forget how I was feeling during a certain event, or that I would forget certain days and memories altogether.  Having a journal to jot down these impressions gives me an added level of security, like a savings account that I can dip into to remember, and reminisce.

And if nothing else, sometimes going back to reread certain entries makes  for a good laugh.