I finally did something I’ve been planning on doing for quite some time. I’ve been a journal writer since I was a little kid. I can remember my first diary having some sort of spring lock. It was pink and I was in elementary school. That’s all I can recall. I’ve owned a bazillion more journals since then. I’m sure they all just went to the trash bucket eventually, though I can’t remember doing anything specific with any of them, until I was an adult anyway. I have been holding onto journals since about 1996. In those journals are many pieces of my life. Usually the entries take negative tones. I tend to journal only the negative or if I’m feeling generally shitty. I wrote every single day for years after graduating high school. In the last few years, my journaling has tapered off to almost non-existent. It’s a testament as to how I feel about my life right now. Fucking spectacular. No need to journal any of it. It rocks!
One day, someone told me that each time they finished a journal they burned it and that desire very quickly became my own. I mean, I would NEVER, EVER want anyone EVER to read my private journals. EVER. I’m no Anne Frank. I’m not documenting much of anything except the craziness I have felt in my brain over the years. No one will be publishing my diaries after I die. They’ll probably be wondering why that woman wasn’t committed long ago. Journaling for me, is where I found clarity in my darkest hours. Even if a few of those hours were pining over no-good-piece-of-shit men and fights I had with my mother. It all seems so trivial now.
As fall descended upon me this year I felt another inner shift. I constantly thought of those 15 years worth of journals and all the things I had written and how much I wanted the satisfaction of watching them burn. It could be so deeply satisfying… knowing that no one would ever be in a position to read my deepest thoughts and knowing that I’ve moved on.
I was right. It was. Deeply. Satisfying.
