As someone who’s dealt with my fair share of mental health issues throughout my nineteen years, I can admit that I have often suffered with my plethora of emotions. Everything has always felt so animated for me, so extreme. When I’ve felt sad, I’ve felt the lowest kind of sadness, and when I’ve felt happy, it’s overwhelmed me to tears. These emotions have always overwhelmed me, and I felt isolated from the people around me who seemed to always have their emotions under control. My resentment tormented me, my jealousy was palpable.
At some point in my middle school years, I began to write. Most likely because of my love for reading, I figured poetry and prose were where I could find those who felt just like me. It was at that time I discovered what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be: a writer, an author, a poet, a creator. And as I began writing my embarrassing poetry in my math notebooks, I found those powerful emotions begin to subside. I began to write about everything. I began to write to everyone. I filled notebooks with unrequited love letters, I scribbled my sincerest apologies on post-its. This writing seemed to have been working.
By the time I was thirteen, I was writing in a journal at least once a week. I would do this to let off steam and seemingly sort out the troubles I was facing. There is where I wrote depressing song lyrics and drew cartoonish eyes and both of those things seemed to comfort me when I felt sad and lonely.
And as the years went by, I began to enjoy watching myself grow in my own words. It felt like somewhat of a gift to myself, being able to reexperience the most meaningful moments in my life. As cheesy as it sounds, it felt as if I left some of my strong emotions on the page for later me to pick right back up down the line. When I reread about my sophomore year crush, I could feel that longing sweep me up again, I swear I could feel it so clearly.
By my later high school years, writing became everything to me. My anxiety seemed to prevent me from living the life I wanted to live, and my depression had begun to sneak up on me, although I wouldn’t know this until a little while later. I had the chance to write a book for my senior year capstone class and I took off with it. In a couple of months, I had written a book called The Truth About Growing, and I was sure I had figured out that truth. It was a poetry book that detailed my little battle with Peter Pan Syndrome and the isolation of the pandemic. It was my most proud moment presenting that book to the world. It felt that all of that pain I suffered was all for this, all for something worthwhile in the end.
When I entered college, my mental health plummeted. All of the confidence and assertiveness that I seemed to have discovered over the summer felt like it was all just a cover up. I knew who I truly was the most lost I had ever been. I carried this loss with me as I made it through the semesters, and I found myself again, but it was because of one thing. Writing.
Before I knew it, I had written another book, The Wrong Edge of Seventeen, and this time it felt a lot more real. Here, I bathed in the depths of my depression, something I only dabbled with in my first time around. A collection of poems, prose, and short stories all telling the story of a young girl on the cusp of adulthood. And although she was not me, she was also very much me. Me in all the ways that matter. But truly this book did something for me that I don’t
believe anyone or anything else could have ever done. It gave me a reason to keep going, a reason to get up in the morning. This book became my lifeline when days felt pointless, and I carried it close to my chest on those days. Having this project gave me something to work towards and that was the motivation I needed to truly seek help and begin to heal.
I continue to journal. After all these years of writing, I’ve found journaling to be another motivator of mine. Having something to vent to, something that will listen to you, it’s so important for when you’re battling those demons we know all too well. I’ve found journaling to be the most rewarding process out of everything I’ve ever done. No price could buy the feeling of watching yourself grow before your very eyes and that is what journaling gave me. That is what writing gave me. It gave me an outlet and it gave me a reason.
I recommend to everyone I know to try to take up journaling and they always respond “I know I won’t follow through.” That’s okay. Sometimes I go weeks without journaling, and I find myself intimidated coming back to it. But you don’t need to fill in all of the blanks of your life, you don’t need to chronologize every single conversation you’ve ever had. Journaling is about your own personal reflection; it’s about letting off steam. So, use it as a way to create a montage of your life. A beautiful collection of some meaningful moments where you stopped to simply think to yourself and write. I promise it is then that you will feel truly free and truly on the road to growing. Ironically, I feel as if it is now, at nineteen, and not sixteen, that I have discovered the real truth about growing.