My first diary had a lock and key. It was novel for a thirteen year old. I think that’s how old I was. At that age I became aware of boys in both good and terrible ways. I had my first kiss and my first encounter with being bullied by someone other than my father. Eighth grade would prove to be one of my most difficult moments. When I think about those earliest pages and the thoughts that consumed them, it makes me…sad. I can’t help but feel for the immature girl who had nowhere else to turn, except inward.

I eventually gave up that diary. I couldn’t keep myself to writing in it every day and felt guilty because I felt I was supposed to do precisely that. I saw failure even in keeping a diary.

I tried off and on to start up a journal throughout high school, but nothing ever took and those pages have since disappeared. Mostly, that’s the timeframe wherein I wrote creatively. Silly, cotton candy sorts of things—love poems, sonnets, short stories. In high school I felt the power of infatuation, popularity, and the pain of losing boyfriends whom I actually thought I loved. I counted the days toward freedom from the weight of my father’s judgment and punishment…although I was made to believe I had no hope of making it in ‘the real world.’ My escape then became school, and in particular, literature.

When my first serious relationship ended just before my first complete year in college, I picked up pen and paper again, but this time began journaling with the promise that I would do so as often or as scattered as necessary. Journaling became a coping mechanism for me through break ups, difficulties with my parents, trouble with roommates, stresses at jobs and school, and the loss of close friends. It became a simple account of my hopes, dreams, and fleeting happinesses. Those are the memories that haunt me now. Those are the pages of tears and laughter that echo too near. Those are the years that brought a heightened awareness of who I was becoming, the years that tossed me into adulthood without any real guidance from any adult. Maybe that is too harsh or makes me sound ungrateful. But it was those years that broke me away from what I had been and lead me to what I am now. It was the point of no return for me. I changed, not necessarily for the better, and have never been the same since.

For the last nine years I’ve kept that ‘journal’ reliably. When I filled one journal’s pages, I began another, and another, and another. Sometimes I still give up on a journal and move on to a newer, fresher cover in a feeble attempt at leaving old, yucky sentiments behind. In reflection, those covers and papers have changed, but largely the colors and quality of the person have not.

The journal I keep today is one of sadness and disconnection. It is not, has not ever been, a glorious story of an enchanted human being. Instead, it is pretty much a catalogue of my mistakes, weaknesses, fears, and disappointments. My voice is cynical and judgmental and angry and desperate and in despair. And the peace and contentment or happiness enclosed within the binding is the quintessential needle in the haystack.

I do not like this voice. I do not like the thoughts and feelings that fill my journal pages. I do not like to revisit the pages of years before. I pity the sad girl I used to be for the struggles she underwent and the struggles that were to come. I know how each journal wends it way toward its back cover. And know well that a journal under separate cover still carries the same voice, sentiment, and struggle that came before.