I started journaling when I was 12 years old, 2 months shy of my 13th birthday. The very first journal I bought was at the 99 Cent Store and the first entry was December 11, 1994. It had a green spine and a photo of a grey kitty cat on a branch with some pink flowers. My parents have been divorced as long as I remember and it was a dad weekend and he gave us some money to buy whatever we wanted at the store and being the stationary nerd I am I, of course, bought a blank book! I took it home and immediately started writing in it: “This is my journal. I keep it to write down my most private thoughts about everyone including myself. I want to express my feelings in many ways but everyone thinks I’m weird as it is.”
Annoyingly this will be told from the point of view of a person who’s spent time in therapy, counseling, and has learned a lot about herself and grown as a person so I’ll have very obvious notes about 12 year old me. Then again, do we want to ask a 12 year old what she thinks is going on? Doubtful it’ll reveal much.
Now that I’ve been through the life I’ve been through and walked through the fire of childhood trauma and emerged through the grace of God and diligent work, it is still very hard for me to think about this 12 year old girl. From the time she was about 7 or 8 until who knows when she was sexually abused by her step-father. My family has 5 children and my mother, who I’ve realized later was also abused was trying her best to keep that man, was told she could not do any better or that he would hurt her if she left. I’m not sure exactly, only that I was left alone to figure out what was happening and why and I really don’t know what that poor little girl felt. We didn’t talk about feelings, we couldn’t afford that. We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with 5 children and carving out space anywhere was near impossible. It’s clear that she needed an outlet for everything inside of her and by some miracle learned to love reading and then probably read about writing in diaries, keeping a journal. The idea came to fruition that December 1994.
I am not by any means a disciplined person or one that sticks to things. I am very fickle and very flaky but keeping a diary, writing in a journal as I refer to it to the day, made so much sense to me that it was practically breathing. It required very little money, only to buy a new one when I was near the end of the current one. And while I couldn’t talk to anyone in my family about what was going on in my life, I could pour my little traumatized heart into those books.
Of course, nothing was written about the abuse itself. I think acknowledging it on paper would be too much. It would make it real. I reference the abuser as ‘someone I have a hatred for’ but not much else. I wrote about crushes, school, how things were boring, my family, fights with my mother, weekends with my father. There’s not much depth to gleam from those early years of journal writing only that it was a practice that carried me and has carried me to this day. Bishop Michael Curry refers to these actions as “rituals of faith”, things you do that carry you when you can’t carry yourself. I didn’t have any tools at my disposal and therapy was many decades away but I had my writing. I had this consistent practice that ebbed and flowed but was always a part of me, the place where I wrote in faith that someday it would make sense or even dare I dream, that someday it would all be better.
Having a consistent writing space did have some side benefits like being able to crush AP history essays therefore making college a possibility. A poor Latina girl on welfare and food stamps from a family of 5 kids and a single mom dreamed of getting out and doing better and somehow that faith became a reality and I got out. I definitely thank the constant practice of writing as a way out. “I wrote my way out,” as Lin sings.
I still journal. Almost every day lately since you know… soul crushing pandemic and lots more time. When my 2nd child was born I didn’t write as much and barely had time to myself and that led to some bad PPD. A combination of things but not being able to have this very special practice was detrimental to my mental health. I never want to go back to that dark place again and so I write a lot or a little but I write out my thoughts and feelings as I had intended to when I started those 27 years ago.
Journaling is what has lead to this rather ridiculous task I’ve given myself. But I wouldn’t be me without giving myself such a task. Speaking of which…
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