As long as I can remember, I have written out my thoughts and feelings to express them before (or instead of) actually saying them out loud. When I was younger, I would write my parents letters to ask for more allowance or tell them why I was mad and holed up in my room. I didn’t consistently keep a journal. Instead I would start up a new diary fast and furious and then my entries would taper off. I kept a notepad for most of my teenage years that I wrote in when I experienced the high highs and low lows. It really helped me make sense of issues that seemed really complicated and troubling. When I re-read the entries, my thoughts are easy to understand, and it takes me back to the time when all I could think of was me, why me, and not the larger picture.
Writing things out also kept me from explosive temper tantrums. I wrote on some pages so hard with my pen they are torn. “I hate my brother!” or some other incoherent scribbles.
Historians love finding diaries and journals because it gives them an idea of what life experiences were like for people; they are clues to another time and place. I like rereading my journals because they show me how I have developed my inner thought and perspective. I laugh a lot at how super melodramatic I was, and I smile at how nice it is to be grown up and beyond the craziness of being a teenage girl. It also makes me more sympathetic to my brother as he goes through the tough part of teenage years, because old journals help me remember what it was like to think parents were the enemy and nothing was fair.
I have continued writing in journals when things get intensely stressful, or to document when things are wonderful. I haven’t gone back and read those yet. I’m saving them for another time when I may feel like the world is against me, and nobody loves me. (Those moments come few and far between, thank you). I like writing because it allows me to witness my own growth and development, in a spiritual evolution sense. I like it better this way. I am sure I’d censor myself if I wrote to document my life for other people to possibly read. Some people dread writing but for me, it is a way to make sense of it all and put into words some of the wonderful things I feel. Writing’s a great gift I’m glad to be blessed with. I hope in the end when I look back on my life I will have been able to use this gift to make other people’s lives better, however that may happen.