If you’re anything like me, you’ve got more than several dozen journal entries scattered across the notes app, Google Docs, old stacked diaries, the back of school notebooks — you get the point.
Alongside meeting reminders and shopping lists, I primarily write personal pieces with heavy emotions or recollections I wish to give life to in the written word. Boys I love become poems; hard days become metaphorical analyses.
Most of the time when we write journal entries, they are little pages of therapeutic reflection that serve their purpose for a moment in time. The act of keeping that note alive in your notes app after you’ve grieved your piece validates that moment’s emotions and intensity even after it is over. At least in my experience, when I keep my journals collected, it’s to tell younger me that what I felt was real and valid. After that moment of time, they aren’t really meant to be returned to.
Unless of course, we do return. Free will, y’know?
I write this because I have done exactly that on this hazy September night. Hazy, because I have shed a few tears over life right now, as one does. I went to my “Self” folder in Google Docs as the good ol’ Drive was already open from school, but before I made a new untitled document, I glanced over the large collection I had created in this folder. Titles of dates and cryptic headers to safeguard what I was really feeling from future me. I often stay vague in my journal titles so future me doesn’t easily recall the pit in life I was going through as easily. Tonight, it just made me curious.
So I started reading the headers that caught my eye. There was 3/25 – rambles which was as vague as vague can be, and the over-the-top-emo-baddie titles like 9/4 – i don’t love you anymore. Ohhhh, the drama.
I read through skeptically, and came out comforted. One, because damn a girl knows how to write a banger conclusion sentence to her vent. And two, because the way I felt in the past sort of soothed the fretful me of the present. Not in way that nothing has changed in a year, but more-so that I struggled a similar feeling and survived, so why can’t I do it again?
Let’s read an excerpt:
But, I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want to want you anymore. I can’t keep waiting forever, for the rest of my life for something that will never exist.
You will never love me the way I deserve, and I will never allow myself to be with someone who doesn’t deserve my heart in all its entirety.
The sole fact that I can somehow write several extensive poems out of a few barren and soulless messages is proof enough there’s a talent of potential brimming within me.
I’m tired of wasting my talents on writing poems for you all these years.
I should be working on my own book,
But instead I just draft the footnotes of myself in yours.
(9/4 – i don’t love you anymore)
Hubba hubba hallelujah that ending popped off harder than the first beat drop of those free YouTube type beats. Don’t come for my analogies, it’s 1AM.
Now, I’m not going through the same boy problems again. However, reading the way younger me strove to put writing first really moved me and reminded me of that spark I used to have to writing and creation. I am in the pits of burnout at the moment, all from my own doing as I made the bed for this Fall semester, and that has really stinted a lot of my motivation for writing my personal projects and honestly journaling as a whole. When I look back at how passionately I wrote, and I suppose how deeply believed this guy held me back from my future, I feel so comforted. I don’t believe in myself right now, but she did. That version of me a year ago would push me to keep going.
This is fun, let’s read another:
I can acknowledge that I feel lost and confused right now. I feel like I am a horrible person simply because I want to put myself first. Why do I feel like the bad guy just for telling someone how much they have hurt me? It’s silly, really.
It is gonna be hard and it is gonna sting letting these people and these things that don’t serve me go. But I know that is what is best for me, I know confidently that I can decide what is and is not good for me. I am allowed to choose who does and does not stay and that doesn’t have to make me a bad person. I am not a villain for choosing to protect myself.
(10/19 – indecisive)
Great lesson to remember from this one: it’s not selfish to put yourself first. This reminds me of a song I used to listen to by Cavetown called Talk To Me. He says, “You don’t have to be a narcissist to love yourself.” I grew up most of my life learning to serve others and that kindness was putting others first before yourself. Now, as I’ve gotten older, I am learning that it is kinder to fill your cup first so you can pour into others the love you wish to give, for what can an empty cup provide? Learning doesn’t mean I get it right away. It takes conscious effort to remember that I am a person worthy of love too. After years of believing in others above yourself, it is hard to even that scale of where your mentality lies. Re-reading this back gives me a visual assurance that I am making progress. That day I chose myself. Today I can too.
The last piece is a long one, but I think it is important to share. The greatest lesson we can learn from our past writing, is how beautiful our minds are.
Here is little me, imagining her future love:
And he would wrap me in his arms as he entered through the front door, bags on the ground, heart on his sleeve. I’d have waited in the entrance for what feels like forever. Nothing would exist in that moment but him and I. I wouldn’t remember to kiss him before I ducked my head into his shoulder and told him how much I missed him. He’d brush a lovely hand over my hair to my face and kiss me sweetly, answering how much he missed me too.
At night, if I was cold, he’d hold my hand. When the problem kept resurfacing of my feet freezing even under sheets, he’d surprise me one evening with the warmest socks he could find with pretty little designs.
He’d find me painting in front of our brightest window. As he’d wrap his arms around my waist and he kiss my temples, he’d hold me like that for a little while before asking if he can try too. I’d grab him a canvas and he’d bring in the wine. As the sun begins to dim down, we’d giggle into each other’s mouths in cherry bliss and under the warmest candle and kitchen backlight.
In our messages during those times apart, he wouldn’t just text me, he’d send me little videos, always remembering to tell me how much you love me at the end of them. And I would never admit it, but sometimes I would tear up at how lovely it felt to be loved by someone like you.
I know you’d be worried when we watch the sunrise at the beach together, over the harbor, from the safety of the house, and you’d turn to look at me only to be met with me in tears. I wouldn’t know how to explain it to you. But being there, the light, you, your eyes, your care, the world, the place I would be… how could I not cry? I’ll never feel deserving of it all, and yet I am ever so grateful to be able to love like this. I’d tell you not to worry, and you’d say you’ll try as you kiss my tears and brush a thumb over my eyebrows.
At restaurants, you’d act all cheesy about pulling my chair out for you and it would make me laugh. We wouldn’t be able to decide so we’d share our plates with each other. You’d finish the meat I can’t and I’d take the tomatoes you always complain about. I would wonder if sometimes you’d say you don’t like those things just so I can have them more. When we tipped, we’d always calculate it to leave a funny decimal point at the end, just because it made us laugh. You cover the bill, because I already bought that cake from the fancy cake shop we always drool about when we walk by it.
Even though you’re usually on your A-game when it comes to watching our shows, on those nights you can’t bear to keep your eyes open, you’d nestle into my neck under the blanket on the couch and whisper to me that you promise you’ll rewatch it later before falling into a peaceful snooze. You’d let me comb through your hair with my fingers for hours if you could. I’d admire how pretty and long your lashes are, the freckles on your face, your neck, your arms. I’d memorize every one for those times you’re gone. And I would pray to God that this moment never ends. Then I would thank him, because you’re sleeping so soundly so you won’t see me crying.
I can’t help but cry harder when you console me against your chest. Grief and gratitude blend so perfectly when you come to rescue me. You know how hard it gets, and you never ask me to stop crying. And when I come down, you still won’t let go. I can’t push you away, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to.
(8/22 – do you still cry?)
This one is some silly fluff, but it almost brought me to tears again. How beautiful a love like that would be. I wish I could tell me from a year ago that she got that, because she did. I love my boyfriend! He’s not a wine-drinker, but he makes me feel the way I had imagined I felt in this scenario.
Oh, God. Yeah, actually I am crying. I also have the Her (2014) soundtrack playing so that could be adding to this nostalgia wave. I think we leave our deepest desires on these pages and files, like little eyelashes we wish on. There are so many dreams we ask for that never get closure, not because they didn’t come true, but because we forgot we ever wanted them so badly. Isn’t that so strange? That we could hold onto a dream so dearly at a young age, and when we are in that pinnacle moment we forgot where it all came from. Like painting with the lightest shade of yellow watercolor, and watching it dry so invisibly we can hardly make out where the stroke began.
It’s consoling to relate. The most relatable person in your life is yourself. So, read your own autobiography and remember the way you used to dream, to hurt, to think. If you’ve lost your way, maybe the old you can give you a helping hand back on the right path.
Go open that notes app.
Avaia L