Finding Herself in the Pages

Finding Herself in the Pages

            Although it had seemed like since the dawn of time, the journal had only entered her life a little over a week ago. Yet it had made such a tremendous impact on her life. It was first brought up in AP Psychology class how there are numerous benefits of writing in a journal for fifteen minutes a day. She was the skeptic of all skeptics.

            “Never in my life could writing in such a petty thing as a journal improve my quality of life,” she thought as she stared bleakly at the rest of the class. Nevertheless, the challenge was there and she was bound and determined to conquer the mountain known as journaling.

Intimidating silence entered her heart like a shy puppy when she pulled out the bright yellow, 1 subject, 70 sheet, standard, Wal-Mart edition, wide-ruled spiral, even though at first she thought it would have been a piece of cake. The object looked no different than her math or history journal. No, that was not what caused such a fright within her soul. What her worry was founded on was the fact that she had to put every little thing on paper in order for the experiment to work correctly. By doing that that she felt as though she was just confirming truths she wished had never existed.

When she approached the starting line of her first journal, anxiety was not the first thing on her mind, or paper.  Splashing with emotions from the school and work day she half-heartedly released her life onto the pages of the yellow spiral. Talking about fears for her senior year of college and confusions about God’s plan for her life and the lives of her friends, she attempted as much honesty as can be expected at a first meeting.  

Contrary to common belief, she did not lollygag one bit. During the writing process she remained entirely calm and quiet. As the timer was running like a freight train, the only sound that escaped from her vicinity was the noise of a black ball-point pen fervently scratching away at the crisp white paper.

Except the next time she joined her faithful spiral pal at the table to scrawl the worries of the world away, her entire demeanor was more like a stampede as buffalo than an ambiguous duck gliding across a pond with ease. She pounded the words onto the page with such authority that they had left indentations on the page. The ridges made with her pen were like raised hieroglyphics; it consisted of things only she could understand at first glance, but with deep investigation could be deciphered. That was the method to the madness known as her journal.

Sparsely using names, barely identifying, characters, and almost censoring herself, was the only real way she felt she could safely journal. Just when it seemed like she kept writing towards social desirability, that was when the floodgates of her soul were shattered and her teenage angst was spread throughout the next two pages and beyond.

Like wildfire, she now had a deep, burning desire for nothing more than pure honesty. She told it like it was. Bloodshot eyes say the pen that wrote of the day’s defeat. Chilling tears stung her hand and soaked through the paper as she wrote of her qualms. The pungent odor of despair flooded her nostrils. Almost like rain and fire, the smell captivated her senses and only caused her to express her emotions more vividly. On the beginning she never anticipated that a trite journal would hit home as strongly and swiftly as it did.

Subsequently, the journal experiment from her AP Psychology class was finished; she could stand and say that 28 lines on a page are more powerful than can be put into words. Strength is in words. Between those two covers is the story of a girl who fought demons big and small, had enormous comebacks beautifully tragically losses, and she ultimately fell in love, except it was not in the traditional sense. She accomplished the tremendous task of finding herself, accepting others, and trying her hardest to make things turn out for the best.

Now those lines are nothing but a distant past. Yellowing pages and smudging ink are the only memorabilia she has the from the journaling period of her life.  It was her saving grace. Her joy was found in the Lord during that time, when nothing else felt constant.

                        If walls could talk, they would tell of all the juicy slumber party secrets. If friends would talk, they would tell of personal vendettas and loves they always wanted. The one thing that could tell everything would be her journal. Engrained into her soul, the journal was a big part of her life during her teenage years. As soon as the experiment was finished, she too had moved on and it was a chapter of her life that closed. She had an avenue that she needed to travel for a brief time to express her without fear. On those few pages,confessions of a teenage, finding her way, was born.