Journals capture so much

Writer wonders about lost words

There’s something special about the day I start a new journal: It gives me a sense of one chapter of my life ending and another beginning. Since those transitions don’t come about too often, it’s very satisfying to literally shut one book and crack another one open, one with crisp, untouched white pages.

Little else gives me such a strong feeling of wide open possibility.

I’ve been journaling for about 22 years now, maybe longer. My first volume was a narrow thing wrapped in a watercolor style cover, which held faint light blue lines inside — perfect for my then-willowy 10- and 11-year-old’s mechanical penciled cursive script.

Not long after my little school crushes, classroom nemeses and middle school hopes and dreams filled the very last page, I received word from my favorite cousin that she had recently burned her journal, and I think it’s fair to say that shocked me to my core. At three years older than me, apparently her 14-year-old life had necessitated the act so that her parents wouldn’t ever learn of her misadventures. She was covering her tracks. I couldn’t escape the feeling that she was so edgy and cool because of it.

As I look back on my collection of handwritten memoirs to this point, what strikes me is how many different purposes each one of them filled for me.

Sure, the early ones were rudimentary what-I-did-today lists while I was still getting the hang of stringing paragraphs together — and of course they morphed into a place for my one-track preteen mind to go round and round on whatever worried or bothered me at the time. Naturally they were a repository for teenage angst and young adult uncertainty as I tested my independence and moved out into the world.

They all had certain meaning as snapshots of my life — what I was involved in at the time, who I was surrounded by and what my day-to-day looked like, but they’re also much more than that. For me, a journal is a vehicle that takes me where I want to go in life. Unlike the way that social media can be used as a highlight reel of the shiniest, best parts of ourselves, I’ve always used journaling to reflect and problem solve, to scheme how to make my life better or to get closer to the kind of life I want to lead.

Whether I was choosing a major, a job or a town to live in, contemplating whether to stay in a relationship, considering friendships, or taking a good hard look at the way I spend my time, putting it in black and white has always brought me clarity.

These days, I keep two. One for the usual purpose and the other to capture all the crazy things my kids say and do.

Way back in 1998, when my journaling was new, living far out in Arkansas’ dairy country meant that we didn’t have trash service, so my dad would do a controlled trash can fire any time ours got full. Thanks to that older cousin, I waited until the next opportunity and then, when I saw flames, I grabbed the one most complete document of my young life, ran out and surrendered it to the fire.

The satisfaction of my own edginess didn’t even sustain me until the journal was done burning. Sure, I could now boast of my own life’s secrets being forever kept in an unlockable vault, but it simply highlighted the truth: There wasn’t a single risque thing in there. That would come later in another volume, but by then, I would know better than to burn it.