I’ve filled almost 100 journals since 2016, when I started journaling and never stopped. My siblings have been given instructions to start a bonfire and burn them all if I die before they do— though not because my notebooks are sinister at all. No evil schemes lay dormant between the pages.
But they’re personal, messy, unorganized; they are the one place I am completely honest. I have a contract with my journals: I can write whatever I want to in there because nobody will read them.
But someone did read my journal once.
I was too confident or careless one evening and left a notebook in a public place, and someone not close enough to me to know how precious I am about my journals read mine. And I think back to the 2 months of life that journal spanned and know for a fact they read some of the most raw, painfully-truthful things I’ve ever written.
It killed me for a bit, I think, but I’m fine now.
“Would you ever stop writing? Has it made you self-censor yourself in your journals?” My friends ask, alarmed, when I tell them.
No, and no, I always answer.
I censored for a bit, and then I realized I was better off not writing at all than writing dishonestly.
The other thing I realized was that when you are so wholly honest with yourself for a decade through writing, you stop being ashamed of your thoughts as often. It’s harder to be embarrassed about how you feel when you practice truthfulness so often it becomes muscle memory. When you’re that honest, you observe what you wrote with curious acceptance and less judgement. This is you, and you might as well stop being so shocked by your desires.
Weirdly but wonderfully, the thing that made me fear a breach of my journals (my honesty) became the very reason I didn’t have prolonged anguish about the invasion.
This is who I am, and I’ve spent ten years accepting it, and even if you are embarrassed of what you know about me now, I am not embarrassed by it.
Even if it happens to me again, I think I’ll be okay. I won’t stop being honest this time, even for a bit.
x Ru