Unintentional, Too Honest, Embarrassing Self Biography... Otherwise known as a Journal.

                I have kept a journal since I was about ten years old. I still have all of them. Before you think too highly of this accomplishment, I’d like to point out I’m not a very good journaller, as often there are months and months in between entries. And besides that, if I could sum up my adolescent journaling in one word, it would probably be “embarrassing.” Sometimes I think it’s a fun idea to go into my closet and find my old journals and read through them. I am completely alone and still horrified to the point of blushing and laughing so hard I’m crying at some of the things I wrote. The old crushes. And the names of crushes written over… and over… The angst. (My gosh, the ANGST.) The whole world is ending teenage drama. The no one loves me. The UGH MY PARENTS. The I don’t know what to do with my life boohooing. I don’t know why I keep them, because I think I’d die of humiliation if anyone read parts of them.

But in between the embarrassing posts, there’s the ones that document who I was and who I am becoming. My relationship with God is basically all written down. My spiritual journey (forgive the cliché, but it does say it best.) can be found on pages. Prayers, wonderings, devotional notes, wisdom given from others, the turmoil of sometimes disagreeing on theology with those closest to me, there it is, in many different colours of ink, in many different styles of hand-writing and printing.

Friends moving away, big transitions in my young life, they are all there. Some in fancy journals, some in old notebooks. Three of my journals are actually letters written to my friend who was a year ahead of me in school. So when she graduated and left for B.C. for a year, I started directing my journal entries to her. Half of our phone-calls and visits were often comprised of going over what I’d written since the last time we had talked so I could get her commentary on every miniscule life event.

So yes, those are the reasons I keep them. The things written in between are the reasons why I must be dead a long, long time before anyone can read them. I can picture my great grand children sitting around a table, trying to read one of my more whiney, angsty, boy-crazy posts out loud and not being able to make it through a sentence without cracking up. Everyone will wipe their eyes and giggle and shake their heads. They will squint at the names I’ve scratched out of crushes and try to figure out what it says.

 I’ll probably still be blushing in Heaven, but whatever.