Do you blog? Do you journal? If you do, what happens if you don’t do it for an extended period of time? If you’re like me, you feel like you’ve somehow let someone down for failing to record your life. As if anyone actually cares about gaps in my own personal history. We’re only human, we aren’t here forever, and no one escapes that reality. So why do I care if I’ve let months or years (gasp!) go by without putting down any record of my thoughts or experiences? Now don’t worry, I’m not hugely upset about it. It just makes me wonder why this bothers me.
I started a journal when I was in 9th grade, using a notepad of multicolored, lined paper that I figured my sisters would never want and therefore would never find if they went snooping. And yet I have always written in a way that, while honest, wouldn’t leave me terribly embarrassed if someone were to read it. I thought that as my life went on, I might want to come back to my thoughts and relive them down the road, just for fun. Or maybe I would have kids someday and when I’m gone they might want to know what my life was like. Is it just me? Do you feel this way?
Recently I discovered a daily diary that my great grandmother used many, many years ago. She didn’t write every day, but the days she did write made me wonder about her quality of life. She would note the weather, visits to or by family members or friends, and then physical ailments. Many times she would end the entry with something like, “Lord, please take away my pain.”
At first I felt very sad for her, seeing all of that documentation of pain in her daily life. Then I thought perhaps it was just part of letting your troubles go up to God. I don’t know.
I don’t remember if I wrote my feelings down during the two times in my life that I was close to suicidal. My depression during my college years was not something I understood, and I did not know how to seek help on my own. While depression is something I continue to battle as an adult, I feel fortunate that someone intervened in my last semester of college before any hideous, morbid thoughts on my part had an opportunity to develop into actions.
In my journals, I’ve been up and down. I’ve written about school, dating, fun, sadness, hopes, fear, work, friends, and family. But there is one section of one of my journals that immediately comes to mind as the darkest of my entries. It starts on the page I wrote in on 9/11/2001. After several months, maybe even a year, I ended up marking the edge of those pages with a black pen. I think I knew that this was something important in history, and maybe one day a young person would be interested in my account the way I used to ask my grandmother about living during the Great Depression.
I know I’m just me, just as important as the next person. Contrary to Ron Burgundy’s assertion, I know I matter to my family and close friends, and that’s all that matters. So it’s not important to me whether anyone reads my blogs or journal entries. Perhaps I am simply interested in the preservation of history. (Is this why I can’t seem to throw anything away?? J) Looking forward into the uncertain future of life in the United States, I truly hope that 9/11/2001 is the only event that ever turns the edge of my journal black.
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