There is a store in my hometown called Rockin’ Rudy’s. It always smells like incense although I’ve never seen incense burning. The wood floors are warped and gnarled and the dust in the vinyl section never fails to make you cough. There is a fat orange cat who purrs when you buy cheap tickets to shitty shows playing at The Wilma. To the right is the cashier and the expansive card section where you buy NSFW cards for your grandma with a sense of humor (not the grumpy Jewish one); to the left is fancy locally-made chocolates and a stairway up to an awkward array of items between the main floor and the second floor. This array includes, but is not limited to, water bottles, magnets, stationery, and books.
My Alice-in-Wonderland-esque fall down the rabbit hole of long-term journaling began in 2012 at Rockin’ Rudy’s. I was standing on the stairs, browsing the awkward array, and I saw a blue journal cleverly marketed toward insomniacs who needed to vent in the late hours of the nights when no one else is awake. Identifying strongly with this type of person, I begged my mom to buy me the journal who, for better or for worse, gave into my impulsive need for self-expression and paid $16.99 at the register with the fat orange cat at the cash register eyeing her disappointedly.
My first entry, presumably the day the journal was purchased, was May 6th, 2012. Although I’d love to express just how awkward I was at 13 by offering a sampling of this entry, there isn’t much there. A lot of smiley faces and misused semicolons. The trap of long-term journaling begins here: when one has been using the same journal for as many years as I have, it is easy to begin to form a sort of resentment toward your younger self. Whether an envious resentment toward naive happiness, a regretful resentment toward someone unwilling to get help when they needed it, or an unnecessary resentment toward people who have hurt you in your past, reignited by re-living your anger and pain, reading journal entries from so long ago is rarely therapeutic.
As someone who struggles with a cocktail of mental illnesses, journaling became a way for me to be manic or depressive without harming anybody else. As wonderful as this outlet sounds, and is for a lot of people, I found myself spending more time re-reading old entries and becoming furious with issues I’d since let go than actually writing. An entry about a friend mistreating me seven months ago would trigger such unnecessary animosity toward someone who I’d since forgiven that, every time I opened my journal to release something, I found myself experiencing more negativity than I was looking to sort out. Not only were my old entries reviving past suffering, but I also began to think of my younger self (and, in turn, my current self) as pitiful and weak and submissive. I would look at the ways I was hurt, or the ways I dealt with pain, and feel awful for that person. And when I confronted that “that person” was me, I hated myself. I hated the way I let people treat me, and I hated how helpless I came across on paper. I hated how miserable, how clearly depressed, how anxious I was. I hated that nobody helped me but, even more so, that I was unable to help myself.
Seeing my own ups and downs and how much shit I went through at such a young age was so triggering to me. After one particularly bad breakup which, in retrospect, was really not a particularly bad breakup, I wrote, “I feel broken but I don’t know where. Everywhere. Make it stop.” And, a week later, “My mouth tastes like cough syrup. I won’t eat lunch today.” I am not sharing these to garner pity but when I read these entries from 2014, I feel miserable about a relationship which otherwise never crosses my mind.
The worst part about this journal, though, is seeing my maturation throughout because, in my case, this maturation is manifested in a bottling of emotions. From 2014’s four-page entry of tear-stained pages and illegible handwriting to September 25th, 2016’s entry which just says, “Not good,” or April 10th, 2017’s, “We broke up. I think I loved him. Very sad.” I see myself beginning to develop the thick skin which I have come to resent. I see myself becoming cold to suffering and, although I feel like a generally happy and fortunate person, I see how the pain throughout these last six years has affected me. While being self-aware of your growth and your past is important, having all of my trials and tribulations written out for me in a shiny blue book is a very scary and nerve-wracking thing. I can look through my journal and say, “This is where I stopped caring how people treated me,” “this is where I fell in love with another boy who just wanted to fuck.”
The ultimate trap of the long-term journal, however, is not seeing the pain and reliving the anger of your past. The ultimate trap of the long-term journal is how easy it is to convince yourself that your life is bad and that you are bad and that you will never be happy. Because right now, I am happy. I like my life. And rereading my hyperbolic, manic depressive, anxiety-induced entries as Truth is a detriment to my current state of mind. The ultimate trap of a long-term journal is that, no matter how many articles you read about the meditative properties of journaling, reopening wounds will never help you heal. If you want to journal, please do. But keep in mind that, when you feel knee-deep in the shit of your past entries, you have overcome whatever obstacles you faced, and you are stronger because of them.