Week 2: Holding Onto Journals is Holding Onto the Past

I've never really kept a journal.  There are points in my life where I've been emotionally stressed and writing about it was easier than confronting the cause of my stress.  So, in those moments I have written diary like entries and kept them aside.

Generally I'm pretty open about my feelings and I don't really care who knows what about me.  But when I write about myself it's usually because I'm angry about something or someone.  Those are the entries I don't want certain people to see because those writings are in the heat of the moment.  I'm unforgiving and hostile when I write with anger and I know that that's not the whole picture.  If someone were to read those it would probably change a lot about those specific relationships.

It's also because I'm so open about my feelings that I have a lack of privacy when it comes to other people's writings.  It sucks, but I'm a snoop.  I like knowing how others are feeling, what's going on their lives, it helps me to understand them.  I would never mention anything they wrote about to them of course, but in the back of mind I at least know more.  It doesn't sound great or make it right, but I like seeing how people really think and feel.

And it's on that note, that if I kept an actual journal I think I would burn it or at least throw it out at one point.  Not exactly because I don't want people seeing it, but more or less because I would feel burdened by its presence.  I think writing a journal and holding onto it is like holding onto the past.  You can't keep it, and if you try to you'll ware yourself out.  I can't imagine having stacks upon stacks of entires about my life.  I wouldn't ever feel the need to go back and look through them and it would just be a lot more work than it's worth.  Burning your journals would be like a cleansing, a release of any resentment, anger, sadness, guilt, whatever you may have felt in the past.  It'd be a way to forget and forgive and start over.