13 Journals and the Puzzles of Life

Yesterday I filled another journal, and it surprisingly only took six months (most of the time the span is longer). My first journal was given to me at the ripe age of 8, and it was a proper diary outfitted with a lock and detachable pen. I wasn't sure what was supposed to go in it at first, so I just wrote about stuff that happened throughout that day. I was perhaps a quarter of the way through the pages when a frenemy at school broke my brain with the explanation of sex. Just the word, SEX, made me stop breathing because it was about the weirdest thing you could do with another person (besides hugging them). I wrote as much as I could into that diary, just so I could get the idea out of my head. People couldn't and shouldn't know what I know. I hid it under a couch cushion, locked, and booby trapped with invisible hairs, so I’d know when to relocate it.

Filled journals spanning a decade.

Since then, I've made it a habit to write out all the bumps, absurdities, and thoughts that muddle my head or drive my emotions to critical mass. Sometimes, I go back to those personal Wikis to see what was going on at a given point.  

“Liz, if we ever dated, it would be great and more fun than I could ever hope to be, but it wouldn't pan out in the end.” I wrote that in the spring of 2004, when I was preparing to take on the world after college. I wrote it, mainly because I couldn't figure out why he told me in the first place. He was intimidatingly smart, and right, of course. This was one of the many instances where I didn't understand what a guy was saying, and it took me almost a decade to catch up. It went in the journal because I was fixated on the honesty and ambiguity of that statement.  Reading it now reminds me how hard it is to date someone, or even find someone who clicks with you and is simultaneously good for you.

So today I start a new journal. It will most likely contain some remnants of the late night conversation I had with Jason last night on how we fall into our own traps. Or maybe just how incredibly delicious this tea is.  Probably both.