To Blog or Not To Blog

I think I was in JR hi when I announced to my mother that I was going to start a journal. "You better watch out!," she warned. "You sister's journal was stolen by some girls at school at they made fun of what she said in it."

I had not thought of taking it to school, but the message took. Journaling was dangerous, inner thoughts are dangerous.

Needless to say, I began immediately. But I did hold some fear discovery, and perhaps with good reason. My most prolific period of journaling was during collage. I kept them private, and the people in my life respected the privacy. When I shared them, people took what I gave them as the gift that was intended and didn't take it as an invitation to browse unvited. If anyone ever read them without permission, I never knew about it.

Except... Except... My boyfriend read my journals senior year and didn't like what he read. We fought, nearly broke up, should have broke up. And in pain and anger and spite, I destroyed all my jourals.

I regret very few things in life, but I regret destroying those journals. I miss those old journals. They were beautiful; collages on each cover.I should have just ditched the boyfriend, the subsequent breakup was inevitable. I was just too young and stupid to know it.

In retrospect, the boyfriends transgressions wasn't so much about journals being bad as it was about him wanting something I wasn't willing to give him. It was symbolic. There were lots of things he wanted from me, sometimes demanded of me, that I wasn't willing to give him. Like marriage, for example. The journal incedent was symptomative of a larger disease in our relationship.

As is par for the course for me these days, I'm just d@mn tired of being afraid of all the things my mother told me to fear. I'm tired of being afraid of painful events replaying in my life. I enjoy being able to keep up with what my friends are doing on their blogs. I've always had an impulse to write, if only for myself.

For me there is only the trying, the rest is not my business.