Journal

When I was a kid, I had a lot of problems - not like health problems or diagnosable stuff, just problems - and one of the recommendations I was given to try and tame them was to write a journal. I don't know if I was advised to do this because they knew I was a writer, or because it was just the thing to recommend, but something about it clicked and it was something I decided to do. They also suggested that I share it with someone from time to time, and what I decided instead was to write them specifically to my then girlfriend.

I don't know whether or not writing these actually helped, but it certainly felt at times as though it did. Sometimes I would write up to three journals in a single day, and sometimes I would go weeks without writing one. I would write when I was angry, upset, sad, or happy. I would write about whatever was on my mind, and I didn't much worry about whether my writing was any good or not. My goal was simply to get my thoughts down, to think through them and to try and explain myself and why I felt the way I did about certain things. I tried to explain who I was. I tried to explain why I was.

I stopped doing that several years ago, and I haven't much thought about it since. It seemed weird to still be writing them when I was no longer dating the person to whom I was writing them. But lately I've been wondering if I should get back into writing them, because I've been struggling with my thoughts and trying to understand things about myself. The problem is that I don't want something like that to be public like my blog is - I definitely wouldn't write any and put them on here. They wouldn't be about good writing, or length, or anything other than what I'm thinking. And I write that kinda stuff here sometimes, sure, like I am now. But when I wrote journals, they contained things that I don't feel comfortable sharing. Things about who I am and what I think about in my most private moments.

But I would still want someone to read them. Having someone to talk to about what's going on has always been of great help to me, though I don't think I wanted to admit that until recently. It's just not who I've always thought of myself as being, but it's who I really am. But I don't know that I would feel comfortable sharing them with my current girlfriend, because of how involved she would be in them, and I wouldn't want to share them with some of my other friends for the same reason. Which kind of puts me at a standstill.

But writing is good. It is good for me. It makes me happy. It makes me feel like I'm doing the kind of thing that I was born to do, when so many other things feel like what I am supposed to do, but don't necessarily want to or should enjoy as much. Writing feels right. And if I can apply tha tto the things that feel wrong, well, maybe that's what I should be doing.