Opening Up

I've always been a person who loved to express my emotions on paper. I grew up as an Army brat, which meant that we were always moving around a lot; so, as you can imagine, I didn't really get a chance to hold on to many friends, even after my father got out. In elementary school, I stumbled across the hobby of journaling. It definitely helped with the loneliness of being a "professional new kid": kids don't really know you that well and, as a nine-year-old, you only tell your parents so much.

I distinctly remember my first journal: it was only about 150 pages with entry spaces that were about maybe three and a half inches in length, two entry spaces per page and had two pink covers book-ending it. It was comforting being able to just let the thoughts flow out onto the page, no matter how silly they were at the time. Even though it was an inanimate object, it was something that would "listen" to me, no matter what I wanted to talk about. That was a major attraction that stayed with me through the years.

As an adult, I still kept up my journaling. It wasn’t hard, seeing as, with each passing week, month and year, there was always something kicking around upstairs for me scratch out on paper—moves, new jobs, friends, college, love interests. Back when MySpace was popular, I would share crazy stories on my blog about random occurrences that would happen, just being a young girl in her 20s. However, it just didn’t compare to writing in my funky journal where I could tell absolutely everything and not worry about any type of judgment. Now that I think about it... I actually kind of miss MySpace! Mostly because of the personalization that you had control of, like playlists, top 10 friends (which was interchangeable each year) and even how your page looked. Some folks kind of overdid it with all the stickers, GIFs and whatever else you could shove on your page, in hopes of sticking out. Individuality was (and still is) the name of the game! I actually tried not too long ago to log on and see if I could recover my old blogs that were actually pretty funny. But, at that point, they had pretty much purged everything on my page except the pictures, which made me pretty sad for about... oh, 15 minutes. Then I got over it because the main story that was the funniest I actually had reposted to my Tumblr shortly after I discovered that platform.

But I digress….

About two years ago, I stopped journaling on paper after it had been compromised twice (!!). It had been read once and written in by someone else the first time. The second time, it had pages ripped out of it, which cut me to the core. Why wouldn't it... that's a major invasion of privacy! In hindsight, it was a bad decision for me because that meant I had to hold everything inside, good or bad.

You can imagine just how well that ended up. *Cue solo crying sessions in the shower, headaches, salty and wet dates with my pillow at night, and isolating feelings of loneliness.*

Well, as you can see, that ends now. I've pretty much come to the decision that I'm done being quiet. My thoughts, experiences, and misadventures are doing no good just staying stuck in that cramped space... and since my journal is just entirely too tempting for people to stay out of, I might as well open it up for any curious eyes to see.

Some stories will be funny, some sad but they will definitely be worth a read. So.... watch me open up.