martes, 22 de septiembre de 2015

Journals

That was my get-better journal. It took me a while to figure it out; at first i wrote every day, the pain overflowed my head, it needed to get out, quickly, so i wrote, and i wrote. Little by little i wrote less frequently, not realizing the entire objective of that journal, one that i inadvertently decided from the first moment i wrote my name and phone number on the first page. I wrote the last page of my previous journal on the last day of the year my father died, just a few weeks after it happened, still fresh with mourning and anger, and sadness. I wrote the first page of this one on the first day of the new year, i wrote -new beginnings- on the front page, naively thinking i was ok enough to start over, i know now that i wasn’t. 

I kept writing on it as the months passed, less and less, still with the same passion every time, but the dates started to be further away from one another. First it was just a day or two, then a week, then a month, then this last time five months. The year is coming to and end and i only write when i feel overwhelmed by my life, sometimes about loss, or doubt, or love. It’s all connected in the end, the turmoil of those few months were a mixture of these things and more. Mourning, therapy, relationships, professional career, success, failure, anger, resentment, confusion, sex, envy, betrayal, money, escaping. It all came through for me. 

It took me exactly two years to finish my red journal, the first one i ever got, with it’s leather binding and empty white pages, no lines, just an empty space devoted to my ideas and feelings. This black Lego journal is not even halfway done and i’m closing on the second year. Then again i feel no rush now, no guilt for not writing as often as i think i should. I realize now the thing i set up to do when i began writing on this black leather Lego themed journal, i was meant to get better, to fix something that got broken, that almost killed me in ways.The fact that i don’t write as often seems like a symptom of me needing to release pressure everyday less, it is me getting better bit by bit, slowly, but steadily. 

I find myself still writing about many of the same things i did at the beginning: my fears, my lovers, my dreams. Each time with a different light, each day with a bit more experience. Sometimes i write about new things, unexpected developments and adventures. Sometimes i still write about my dad and how much i miss him, and how sometimes i long for his advice on the simplest of problems. Finally, i sometimes just write about what’s going on, a sort of archival record of my life for when i want to look back and know what was going on in my head and life in a particular date, who was there, why something happened or how i was feeling because of it. 

Writing is my pressure valve, when the going gets tough i get writing, and then going. Pardon my literary license from Billy Ocean. When your head is as messy as mine you need a way to organize and express loudly your inner thoughts, because if they stay in they remain as a blur, loud noises in the middle of the chaos that is the human mind. When you write or speak them out loud they become real, they are somehow tangible and you need to deal with them, you can’t unsay them, they can’t be unwritten. That sound was heard, that ink was spent. And with such actions, consequences are demanded, and actions must be taken, and thoughts are born outside your own little universe. 

I write because that way i can’t escape my inner demons, i make my writing public because that way i have to confront myself, and the readers become the witnesses of that confrontation. That way i have absolutely no choice but to do something about it, to learn, to act, to be more than i thought i could ever be. I don’t know when i will finish writing in that black Lego journal, it will take as long as it has to, but at the end, i know i will be ok. With any luck the next one i own will be full with ideas, happy thoughts and great memories. One can only hope.