Growing up I always had a journal with me. I can remember being drawn to any empty book and wanting to fill it with my hopes, my dreams, my every thought, my everything. I found comfort in my literary shelter far away from the stifling environment that I lived in. I was free. Even after every journal I had was violated by eyes that didn't have business reading it. When that happened I would simply stop writing in it and eventually get a new one.
Last night I was flipping through an old journal I had when I was eighteen. It was so weird, reading every word that I had placed on the the pages was like I was back in those places where I had written them. I was suddenly the barely legal adult navigating the world of partying, bad decisions and fear of letting someone love him back. It wasn't the things that passed me by that brought tears to my eyes as I read each entry, it was the things that I stopped myself from doing that did it. I bit my tongue when I should have spoken my mind, I held on to those who didn't care for me the way I cared for them when I should have let them go, I let those who cared for me slip away and using the same excuses to justify my own loneliness.
April 27th 2010 a.k.a exactly one year after I had started that journal. This was the last entry:
As the clock strikes 1AM today marks the one year anniversary of getting this journal. My mind is blown by all the entries in here. I am one complicated person. So much has happened since the last entry so I'm going to try and catch up. Starting with my weekend. I recently bought a camera so I thought I'd test it out at a party. I took so many pictures that night. Then there was Matt. We talked at the T-ball game and we all decided to get together that night. As the shots were poured and we all slowly got wasted, the sexual tension was everywhere. We eventually kissed and end up crashing there and cuddling the next morning. We kiss the next night again to celebrate his last night in Clovis. It was nice actually getting some male attention. Too bad he left yesterday, who know's what could have happened. He looked at me like I haven't seen in a long time. The butterflies were out and about and now they left to Alaska. Remind me to tell you about MLC. It just keeps getting better.
That was the last entry in that journal and the last time I ever wrote in a journal again. Then began my dark period, but we all know about that. Then in January of 2011 I bought a new journal. Here is the very first entry from it:
January 17th, 2011:
It wouldn't be a new year without a new journal to chronicle every detail of it. Towards the end of last year I felt like I was on the cusp of something great and now I'm ready to tackle this year head on. I've made a few changes already. Starting with my decision to stop drinking, not partying a lot, staying home more and immersing myself more in my work. I've started a new website for my blog and posted my first YouTube video. I feel really good about the work I'm doing and I plan to expand my tiny empire. From my blog and beyond. Welcome to 2011: My Year.
And it was. 2010/2011 were the happiest times of my life. I did a little comparison of both journals and while they are written by the same person, they are not. My previous journal was written by a child lost, scared, alone and vulnerable. He knew nothing of himself or the world he lived in. He wrote about a nightmare that he wanted to wake up from but couldn't. The second journal is currently being written by me. The person I am at the moment, because I am a person of change. I am an adult now. I am living and I am loving. I am living a life that humbles me with it's beauty and I am loving every minute of it. It's become my career choice to grow in the wisdom that I've come across based on my past and accept it for what it was. No longer do I bite my tongue, but shout from the rooftops whatever I may be feeling. I've learned that we get nowhere when we don't embrace our every emotion. The ones who I carried deep feelings for when they didn't feel the same, those feelings are being laid to rest and I feel lighter from it. I now hold the ones who love me truly tighter than I ever thought I could and no longer do I make excuses. As an adult, we have to take responsibility for our actions good or bad.
So maybe I didn't go back to school to become a nurse or fall in love, but I did do a lot things that that eighteen/nineteen year old didn't think would happen: I quit pizza hut, I moved out on my own and made a life that I'm completely happy with with my own two hands.
I guess you could say that this is all a long winded way of saying that I need to stop being so hard on myself when I think I'm not moving forward in life. I need to give myself some credit every now and then because what I saw in black and white has turned into all kinds of beautiful shades of color <3
Xoxo.
B.
Dedicated to eighteen-year-old Ben,
If only you knew back then what you know now. But then what fun would've it been? ^_^
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