Dear Diary, I'm Looking for the Answers

This is a story I've heard a thousand times

I reread my journals for the very first time this week. The earliest journal began in 2014. It was an entertaining thing. I often take the time to look at my former self. Either through my photography, my videos, or even the things I was searching for over the week. It is a practice I use to get to know myself better. 

I found a lot of interesting things tucked away in a decade’s worth of writing. None of it was shocking. Cringe teenage me, quotes from books I still tell people to read, and playlists on paper. For every date I have ever been on I’d write “going out with ____ writing it down just in case it becomes something.” It’s unfailingly the first and last time you ever see that man’s name in writing. But I have never been described as particularly romantic. I do however have a lot of stuff about my friends. The exciting revelations that female friendship brings me. It all feels so typical and pretty much what a journal by me should look like. 

I rarely suggest the practice of looking back because I think if you aren’t careful you start calling what has already happened, your glory days. But the glory days are most often right in front of you. For me, there is a benefit to letting your younger self tell you a story you’ve heard a hundred times. It puts the rest of your life into perspective. I want to encourage people to look back because I can see how much I have gained in doing so. 

By looking back at my journals I started to see things even clearer. My photos or videos document my youth, girlhood, or good times. Each time I looked at any media I had created I saw how happy I was despite everything that was going on in my life. The heartache or uncertainty is a sort of context you know from being in your twenties. While I sometimes take a photo of myself crying, it never really tells you what the tears are for. Opening up my journals I saw everything. I poured my thoughts onto each page writing on the range of emotions I was feeling daily. 

Seems like a downer to read, but it wasn’t. It almost made me laugh because of how big each issue felt in the moment, but how minuscule it was in hindsight. It’s not that I am laughing at my feelings, or making fun of myself. It just feels like a normal thing everyone goes through. The only way we can learn how small things are is by making note of it. Holding it up to all the other things that happen and seeing how much you care once it’s far behind you. 

I look back and it has always been a way for me to discover what it all means. When I open my old journal it’s like I’m reading after dark, flashlight in hand saying, dear diary, I am searching for the answers. When you relive the string of events that led you to the present you can see the plot points of your own life mapped out and it makes you appreciate each season of your life. You see the winter before you got your dream job where you had very little work and you can now recognize it as a rest period. Suddenly instead of it being a time of failure, you see it as the moments before triumph. You start to recontextualize your life and view it from a softer standpoint. You see all the things you didn’t know were coming when you were crying in the bar bathroom because you wanted that crush to view your story. It gives you a chance to rewire the unknown as an exciting new thing instead of a dreaded black hole. In reading my first journal all I wanted to tell 17-year-old me is that she couldn’t even fathom all the things she would get to do in the next decade so don’t even try. 

The funny thing is too, you see people older than you tell you this exact idea. This is not a new revelation but it always feels like, well how good could it really get? Really great actually! But you have to be open to seeing it, you have to see it in each step you take towards your goals. You have to see it in the notes you leave about the beautiful spring day after pages of your journal document your winter blues. You have to pay attention and read those moments back to yourself. 

I encourage the action of taking a peek. Not living in the past but using it to reevaluate how you treat the present. It doesn’t always happen all at once. It doesn’t make you not feel the anguish of your current problems, it just makes them a little easier to deal with. It makes you want to go outside and take in everything that’s happening right now so you can call back the memory when you need it most. It makes your feelings important even if tomorrow your dread will be forgotten. Now I document how I feel, what’s going on, and every facet of my life because I know in another decade 37-year-old me will be so excited for all the things that are coming my way.

It’s a strange thing to balance but it can be done. Your past and your present are a sort of history that does better when they’re intertwined. You can’t hold on too tight to what was and you can’t hope to forget. Otherwise, you’re learning the same lessons over and over. I think I waited just a little too long to look at my journals. I always felt like this stagnant person who lacked change and it became clear upon reflection just how much I had changed. I have time and time again believed my life was just running by me, but the more I looked at my journals the easier it was to see just how much time I have.