When I step within the realm of my writer-self
the noise of the world stops.
I let myself go quiet.
I let myself listen.
This is a spiritual practice.
Whenever I get caught up with trying to fit
into the should-do's and should-be's of the mainstream, writing is my path back to my authenticity. This is an on-going battle. Writing is my main weapon of defence. It is my mode of transport for the sacred journey to myself and my tool of excavation once I arrive.
In Homage to Early Cringe
My first journal was a Christmas present from my mum when I was thirteen. I don’t know why she bought it, I certainly hadn’t asked for it. Nobody wrote in my family. She probably just saw it in a shop and thought – my daughter’s good at English, I’ll get her that.
A chance happening. A random thing.
And there it was.
It had a red plastic cover with the word ‘DIARY’ embossed in gold in the right-hand corner. Inside, at the top of each page was a special place for the date to go. I knew this because the word ‘Date’ was next to it. I was an obedient child, so I filled in the date as neatly as I could. Under this were rows of empty lines.
Now what?
There were no further instructions.
I’d heard of diaries and journals. I’d seen them in films on the telly. Posh old-fashioned people wrote in them and always started their entries with ‘Dear Diary…’. Then they would write about their adventures and their thoughts and feelings.
I didn’t have any adventures.
But I wanted to fill those lines with something.
At the beginning I would write about school, about what we had for dinner and what we watched on the telly. There was nothing else to writing about. I’d put a pleasant spin on things; try and make my life sound more interesting than it felt. I didn’t want to write about how sad I was. I wanted to make myself look good, just in case I should ever become famous and my diaries were unearthed for the TV documentary on my humble beginnings. It wasn’t very satisfying but I kept coming back to it.
It took adolescence to bring me to my senses. No more pretending. Suddenly I understood that these pages were a place – and at that time the only place – for brutal, bare-faced honesty. All my desperate angst and obsessions, my loneliness and confusion went in there. The book filled up. I got another. This one had flowers on it and a lock and key. Not that there was any threat to my privacy, but it felt nice to have it extended in this way, until I lost the key and had to cut it open.
Later on, I threw away those first two journals, when I read them over and could hardly bare the high octane of cringe I’d achieved. I couldn’t have any TV documentary using these!
Still, I’m forever grateful to them. They set me on my path.
Since then, I have never been without a journal at my side.
My very own corner for my very own thoughts.
I don’t know how people manage without it.
I don’t know what I would have done.
To date, I have more than fifty journals in all sizes.
Above is a picture of a few of them.
I love them dearly.
They’re not as embarrassing as they were, or maybe I’m not so easily embarrassed.
Still I hardly ever read them.
That's not their purpose.
They are process in motion.
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