I genuinely don't know if I would function as well as I do ("well" being highly subjective) if I didn't carry pens and a notebook around with me at all times.
Pretentious writerly bullshit? Probably. Still a thing that helps me live? You bet.
I was having tea with a lovely new friend a few weeks ago, a fellow writer. I said something that I didn't know was so deeply truthful to my experience until I heard the words hanging in the air: I feel safer holding a pen and paper.
I always have. I haven't always journaled traditionally, but my personal narrative in diary form stretches all the way back to early middle school. Xanga, Livejournal, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram ... and now Tough Pluck. Each of these sites holdes paragraphs and paragraphs of random bullshit and my deepest, most heartbreaking growing-up secrets. Not to mention several posts worth of Broadway lyrics from shows I've never actually seen. (I'm looking at you, Wicked.)
When I started therapy five or so years ago, I began keeping a tangible pen-and-paper journal. It was incredibly tough at first -- I didn't know what to write about, I felt like I was always complaining, I was worried that someone would find it. Or that I didn't really deserve to have feelings. I was still reeling, perhaps subconsciously, of losing a handwritten journal I kept in Freshman year of high school -- and the months of shame that meant: terrified that someone I knew, or some stranger, would know the secrets of my 14-year-old heart.
There is blood in those lines pages from when I self-harmed, and felt I had no one to ask for help. There are pages wishing I could just -- not wake up. That I could find peace in eternal sleep. In nothingness. I've never really felt like I deserved to die. I've never wanted to put that pain on the people I love. But I have desperately wanted relief, so deeply I do not know how to explain it, even still.
I still have those days, weeks, months.
Currently, I semi-routinely use 4.5 journals. One I carry with me every day, everywhere I go. One is a journal specific to an exercise I am doing in therapy. One is a watercolor art journal, for Brene Brown's "Art of Imperfection" online course. One is the Steal Like an Artist journal. And then, a tiny mini-journal I bring along if I only have a small bag with me -- which is what I wrote this very entry in. Yeah, it might sound excessive, but it helps. Purging myself of bad or painful experiences makes me feel more in control over them -- it helps me sort through them, understand them better. I am steadier. If life is climbing a spiral staircase whose end you cannot see, writing -- journaling -- is the handrail I can grip when I am off-balance or frightened or heartbroken.
I write down the happy stuff, too. I write lists. SO MANY LISTS. Ideas get jotted down in the margins of what I need to pick up at the grocery store. I freewrite for my plays. I occasionally do to the oft-touted "morning pages".
It is a way to look back and understand my past. It helps me to organize my future. It helps me survive the present. It helps me remember and it guides me towards forgiveness. Toward others. Toward life. And more importantly, toward myself.
Pretentious writerly bullshit? Probably. Still a thing that helps me live? You bet.
I was having tea with a lovely new friend a few weeks ago, a fellow writer. I said something that I didn't know was so deeply truthful to my experience until I heard the words hanging in the air: I feel safer holding a pen and paper.
I always have. I haven't always journaled traditionally, but my personal narrative in diary form stretches all the way back to early middle school. Xanga, Livejournal, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram ... and now Tough Pluck. Each of these sites holdes paragraphs and paragraphs of random bullshit and my deepest, most heartbreaking growing-up secrets. Not to mention several posts worth of Broadway lyrics from shows I've never actually seen. (I'm looking at you, Wicked.)
When I started therapy five or so years ago, I began keeping a tangible pen-and-paper journal. It was incredibly tough at first -- I didn't know what to write about, I felt like I was always complaining, I was worried that someone would find it. Or that I didn't really deserve to have feelings. I was still reeling, perhaps subconsciously, of losing a handwritten journal I kept in Freshman year of high school -- and the months of shame that meant: terrified that someone I knew, or some stranger, would know the secrets of my 14-year-old heart.
There is blood in those lines pages from when I self-harmed, and felt I had no one to ask for help. There are pages wishing I could just -- not wake up. That I could find peace in eternal sleep. In nothingness. I've never really felt like I deserved to die. I've never wanted to put that pain on the people I love. But I have desperately wanted relief, so deeply I do not know how to explain it, even still.
I still have those days, weeks, months.
Currently, I semi-routinely use 4.5 journals. One I carry with me every day, everywhere I go. One is a journal specific to an exercise I am doing in therapy. One is a watercolor art journal, for Brene Brown's "Art of Imperfection" online course. One is the Steal Like an Artist journal. And then, a tiny mini-journal I bring along if I only have a small bag with me -- which is what I wrote this very entry in. Yeah, it might sound excessive, but it helps. Purging myself of bad or painful experiences makes me feel more in control over them -- it helps me sort through them, understand them better. I am steadier. If life is climbing a spiral staircase whose end you cannot see, writing -- journaling -- is the handrail I can grip when I am off-balance or frightened or heartbroken.
I write down the happy stuff, too. I write lists. SO MANY LISTS. Ideas get jotted down in the margins of what I need to pick up at the grocery store. I freewrite for my plays. I occasionally do to the oft-touted "morning pages".
It is a way to look back and understand my past. It helps me to organize my future. It helps me survive the present. It helps me remember and it guides me towards forgiveness. Toward others. Toward life. And more importantly, toward myself.
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| My latest Decomposition journal. |
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