I realized the other night that I’ve been keeping a journal for over twenty years.
I’ve probably talked about my journaling before, but I’m prone to repeat myself more often now that my brain is 95% song lyrics and movie quotes. So, I’m just going to talk about it again.
I remember attempting diaries as a kid, but never stuck with it. Probably because I was nine and didn’t have much of a life to write about and even though I was a writer, I thought diaries were strictly for real life escapades. As far as I was concerned, I was not doing any escapades worth writing about back then.
About six months after my oldest niece was born, I was gifted a journal. She’s twenty-two now. Anyway, it took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage to write my first entry. Once that seal was broken, though, I found it easier to write down my thoughts. But it would be years before I made it a daily habit.
Despite what my nine year old self thought, I’m still not using my journals strictly for my real life escapades, though the few escapades I do manage to have typically rate a mention.
My journals are where I keep my crazy.
My mind is a hellscape. It frequently gets too full. That one time I saw a therapist for three appointments before she got sick and I never rescheduled, she said that part of my problem is that I hold things in to the point that they overflow, and that retention was contributing heavily to the toxic state of my mind. So, I started putting the things that I couldn’t or didn’t want to talk about out loud into the pages of my journals. It helped. It got it out of my head and onto the page where I could see it and examine it from a safe distance. Poking about the words spewed from my brain has helped me a lot when it comes to figuring out how my defective grey matter works.
My roommate, who once had her privacy invaded thanks to a journal-reading incident, asked me how I can just leave my journal on my bedside table without worrying about someone reading it.
Simple.
If you read my journal, you get what you deserve.
People underestimate the shit that goes on in my head. I’m not just writing about annoying coworkers and petty grievances and people I find dreamy (though I do mention that sometimes). I’m not just jotting down my goals and to do lists and my dreams (though I do that, too).
This is where I keep my crazy. My rage. My self-harm thoughts. My go-to-jail thoughts. My delusions and illusions. My paranoia. My anxiety. My depression. My whacked out, what the fuck thoughts that would make even the strongest whimper and cringe. This shit is not for the faint of heart. It’s not even for the sure of heart.
If someone decides to go sneaking a peek at those pages, they’re going to end up scarred for life. They’re certainly never going to look at me the same way ever again. And it would be all their own fault.
I have every intention of destroying my journals before I die. Or leaving instructions with someone I trust to have them destroy them for me. There’s no goldmine in those pages, nothing publishable, nothing salvageable, nothing memorable. Nothing that needs to be remembered.
They’re just bits of my mind, anyway.
They should go with me to the grave.
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