originally written 6/3/2015; updated 2/25/2024
“Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.” – Cyril Connolly
I used to write in a journal constantly.
I never put them down, I always kept a small journal in my bag just in case I felt like I was about to get this huge revelation and write a novel in the span of 40 tiny pages. I couldn’t get enough of words. I thought that they could change me, make me something different from myself. I was hoping that if I learned enough words I would know how to talk about myself and how I feel who I am without stuttering or taking pauses or failing all together.
I willed words to be something that they’re not. I willed them to be life-alterers that could make me someone new and original. Someone that wasn’t me.
But now I’ve realized that words are only tools that I can use to make myself better.
So I’m going to do something very out of the box, and share with you some of my earlier journal entries that are sure to be embarrassing. But it’s important to understand what I came from, and some of the things I write about, especially if I’m open enough to publicly post and share on a public domain.
I love words. I love the sounds hey make and the sentences you can forge from nothing but vowels and consonants and how stressing different syllables equates to something that sounds completely different from the original.
And the beauty that is a novel! I could spend my whole life reading book after book and never be satisfied with the plots and characters because I will always want more. When I just couldn’t reread another book or find something worthwhile, I decided to try out writing for myself.
I was terrible.
Reading my earlier writing is like watching a train wreck while being on the train and causing the wreck. All at once.
My syntax was all wrong (still is, actually) and I wasn’t descriptive. It was like a child trying to make sense of the world without being able to speak or explaining the color blue. I was horrid. And yet I tried again.
And again.
And again.
Until I hated myself and my words and anything I ever thought of because I just refused to believe that I was a failure at something I loved so much. How could I falter with words when words were all I knew?
But I did. It kept happening and I kept beating myself over the things I wrote or tried to write; I wasn’t getting anywhere with my negative attitude. So I tried a different approach.
I used my negative attitude to write. This method is flawed, given the my pessimism and the fact that I just don’t really see a lot of joy in the things I do. So most of my writing was sad or morbid and just plain depressing. Which is also understandable, my pessimistic tendencies spawned from the deep depression I was going through for most of my adolescence, so it wasn’t unexpected that I was just as sad on paper as I was in reality.
Being sad just became a staple, and it was apparent. Through the way I acted with my friends, and definitely in my journal entries. But, much later, I got ahold of myself (at least for short bouts of time) and I was able to feel more than just sad or alone.
I have been in love before. I have felt love like waves, it’s crushing and overpowering but so, so wonderful. It’s a miracle, really, that I am able to feel so much for another person while not really feeling much for myself sometimes. I don’t like talking about it, or voicing my opinions on love because I’m afraid that my words could cheapen the things I feel. I always thought to keep the most important things to myself, like my deepest secrets and my favorite books and love, because I don’t want anyone to have the opportunity to take it away. to make me feel stupid for falling in love or being in love or just loving in general.
And to counteract my fear of…what? Fear of love? Fear of being in love? Fear of wanting love? Whatever it was, to counteract it I wrote down the things I felt so that one day, if I don’t feel this love again, or if I’m lost and I’m trying to find my way back to the love I once had, I’ll reread all my entries and I’ll understand just how incredible it is to fall in love and be so reckless with words.
I’m such a hopeless romantic that all of my cute, living journal entries are just metaphors to stars and planets and the sea and now I understand why it’s such a cliché. I feel like an open sea and my love is endless like the stars in the night sky it is all so true I wouldn’t have believed it I didn’t feel it myself.
But, some things just don’t go away, and even my endless starry love wasn’t enough to keep sadness away. And that’s okay. Like isn’t perfect, there are pitfalls and things that cause pain. We just have to learn to combat it all before it crushes us.
I don’t understand how to move on when people die.
Which is interesting, because I am normally not a very sympathetic or emotional person. Thinking in black and white normally makes sense to me. But not death. Death confusing my senses, and my train of thought. I force myself to be stoic in crisis like death but I always end up lost and in a daze.
It’s such a hard to imagine someone being there and the next day, they just aren’t anymore. It’s such a simple change, like taking a tack out of the wall or erasing a name off of a sheet of paper. But it’s so absolute, and so damaging.
I know how to handle every single other change in my life except death. I don’t know how to deal with it, how to alter my way of thinking to make it acceptable. I can’t imagine doing it myself. Just to not be here anymore, with my friends and my family. We won’t be able to experience life with the people we grew up with anymore. We will no longer be here. And that just doesn’t make any sense in my head.
I am at all loss when it comes to emotional connections. I don’t think it’s a neurological thing, like I’m just stunted in the art of being kind and compassionate and meaning it. There isn’t anything genetically wrong with me to make me not want to be speak to people or be around people when I’m alone or to understand what to do when someone cries. Trust me, I’ve had the tests done. But nothing came up and I just have to believe that whatever is wrong can be fixed. Changed. I can alter the way my feelings affect my life. I have to trust that I am not as unemotional and as unfeeling as I think I am.
I’m not as unemotional as I think I am, am I? I feel like everyone else, I cry sometimes. I get angry and upset often.
But my problem is, I don’t understand how this all correlates with other people. My emotions are mine and I understand that, but when other people try to mix their emotions and their feelings and thoughts in with mine things get jumbled and confused and I don’t know what to make of it so I close myself off. I become distant, and I do not allow outsiders in when I’m being distant.
Maybe it’s a coping mechanism.
Or maybe I’m just screwed up.
Either way, this is what I write. These are my thoughts that I have written on paper and this is how I get through the day. Forgive the spelling errors and mistakes and terrible syntax. I write the way I feel and my brain has to follow.
