I've been thinking of writing a blog post like this for a long time (I'm talking years). Every time I considered doing it, I knew I wouldn't be able to fully capture what journalling, diary writing and scrapbooking means to me. Not being able to encapsulate that would irritate me, so I've always decided to put it off. Until now that is. I guess I will have a go and accept the shortcomings. And that's okay.
Just a few of my journals, diaries, scrapbooks etc
I started writing before I went to school. My mum taught me how to write; not out of being a 'pushy parent', but because she saw my enthusiasm and wanted to make me happy. It did make me happy-- very happy in fact. So happy that I began to fill up any pieces of paper I could find, the back of envelopes, 'books' cobbled out of old greetings cards and folded paper and, at some point, proper notebooks.
This love of paper and all the needs within me that it met (or sort of met) extended into letter writing, scribbling poems on top of painted scraps of paper, making my own comics and 'magazines'. My papery obsession didn't end with the end of childhood though. In the month I turned 30 my dream of having my own published book came true, just a couple of years after I finished my master's dissertation on DIY publishing and 'affectively motivated' texts and artwork (texts that have the emotional response of their readers as their primary goal).
Diary writing was the first bug that bit me real hard though. I was about ten, the perfect age to be grabbed and pulled under because my world was changing and nothing made sense anymore. I wrote, without fail, every day because it was my outlet when I felt I had none and it knew me when I felt nobody else did.
In diary writing, I had entered a stormy tradition that welcomed emotionality. I was a perfect fit! I could cry without being told to stop. I could love without being told to stop. I could feel everything just the way I wanted to feel it. It was all very Gothic...ink felt like blood. I read far too many books that echoed this sentiment. It was very unhealthy and actually dangerous.
Without my journals though, I didn't know who I would be or how I would cope. I collected ephemera from my life and stuck it in; I must have found it too hard to let anything go. They are full of letters I (thankfully) never sent. When people say journalling is good for your mental health, I think, 'well, it's a lot more complicated than that: have you met 15 year old me?' Writing could never meet all my needs, but I was going to damn well try.
When I turned 19, I went to a very famous and very old university where I studied the authors and writers I held so close. I felt like I had landed in the right place at the right time, but my mental health finally imploded as it had been threatening for years but I had known no way of stopping it. It felt cruelly inevitable and the timing wasn't great; to have my dream ripped from between my fingers just as I had caught it. The mental breakdown that ensued was so intense, I physically stopped being able to read or write and I was too unsafe to be left alone. Drawing filled the need that writing had hit before. I used it to communicate how I felt, until my capacities for reading and writing came back and I returned to university.
In the years that followed, I did a lot of talking with people who helped me understand myself. I found people, places and ways of living that suited me. I started to live more comfortably in my own skin and I shed the incessant writing. I didn't need to document my invisibility anymore because others saw me. I wasn't hiding in my pages. I wrote less about the things I lived. If I needed to say something, I said it rather than wrote it. If I needed to do something, I did it rather than wrote about doing it.
It felt scary to use my notebooks less, just as it's scary to have any change in life. Of course, my writing didn't stop though. The spoken word communities when I left university were there for me, just as they were there (and still are) for countless others who need a space to breathe and be themselves. The blogging was in set in motion too, but anger and confusion and a desire to connect with others who felt the same.
A number of years ago I went to an exhibition at King's College London called 'Dear Diary: A celebration of diaries and their digital descendants'. It was strange to have a public celebration of something private. Joyful though because being someone who writes journals, diaries or makes scrapbooks is like being part of a club, but one where you never meet the other people in it. I kind of got to meet some of the other people in it that day.
Throughout my pregnancy, my journal turned towards my unborn child and all my hopes for her and for us. When I didn't know what path to take with my career, whether I should speak openly about my BPD, when my best friend of eleven years broke my heart telling me she didn't want to see me again, when I had an early pregnancy loss...the pages were there for me to let it out. As a mum, I record my daughter's joyful milestones and memories between the covers.
Just a few days ago, I mapped out why I obsess over certain themes, tracing the patterns and watching the common themes emerge, so I can understand what compels me towards certain people and ideas. When things feel difficult (as they sometimes still do), I tell myself, make a mark. To have it out feels better. Now and again, I look back at what I wrote or drew and sometimes it brings back lost emotions. Sometimes it just makes me laugh. Time is a great healer, it's true.
I've let go of many things in my life, but writing is something that I will never, ever let go. Why would I, when it holds a great deal of me together?
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