In preparation for NaJoWriMo,
I have been doing some nightly reading of my journals dating back to 1989, when
I was a 13-year-old 8th grader experiencing my first love, all the
way through 1999, when I married my college sweetheart.
What strikes me—after the
mortifying reality of how teenage-me was so boy-obsessed—is the way my voice
and sense of self evolved from 13 to 24. I was always very introspective and
self-aware but as a teen, those things were way too clouded by hormones and a
desperation to be loved (and my parents’ crumbling marriage). As a young adult,
I had unclouded access to that same introspection and self-awareness, which
acted as intuitive guides through the terrifying maze of post-childhood, post-college
reality, including career and marriage decisions.
Now, here I am at 42, and as
I approach a month of pen-to-paper journal writing, I wish for myself that same
total access to my inner-me. An access that, in adulthood,—with the onslaught
of social media when I was in my late 20s—has been as clouded, at times, as it was during my teenage-hood.
What I have learned in my social-media
entrenched adulthood is that I need my public writing outlet (blogging and
posting) and my private writing outlet (my dear old diary). Both have helped me
to navigate the transition from early adulthood into middle adulthood. Through social
media, I can lament and validate the hardships of being a writer, a mother, and
a therapist. Through my private journal, I can gripe and moan about things I
would never even say out loud…about mothering, writing, and therapy-ing.
I can tell you all this: Nothing
I write over the month of April will be for public consumption—and that’s the
point, right?
