Today I went through one of my journals. It’s funny the things we don’t remember and the things we choose to remember. In this specific book was a letter to my niece. Now the interesting part is I refer to another journal to her in this letter. I wrote it in 2012 and speak of the other journal that I assume I wrote during my time being sick.
I speak of asking her to read the journals of my life to truly understand what I have been through. I even speak about a memory I don’t have in my mind. But the memory was written in the journal at the time. I tell her of the specific memory about a night that it was raining and thundering hard and she said let us pray. “Let us ask God to stop the rain and thunder.” Apparently that’s exactly what we did, and sure enough it had stopped raining and thundering. She tells me “let’s pray again and thank God for stopping the rain and thunder.”
I speak about the memory and reference to it as how close we were and go on about my sickness.
The actual reason I speak about it now, while reading that I thought to myself how much was my choice to not remember. It’s clear I was in the right mind in that particular letter. Yet the memory isn’t there of me ever writing this letter. How weird is it as humans we experience so much but don’t remember so many of the things we experience. We tell the same stories but without remembering all the details of the stories.
In this letter I beg her to read from one of the many journals I have of my life. I tell her to read the brown journal because in that journal I speak about her so much. It’s weird when all your memories are gone and you go back to read things you don’t remember writing.
I am extremely grateful that even though I lost so many of my memories, my journals are my archive. Maybe one day I will write a book completely based on those journals. It seems there are so many things that I experienced and don’t know about. I guess that was always the purpose behind journaling. You write what you feel in the moment. Years later that moment is gone but the memories, the pain, the thoughts you had are there written for you to see again.
I believe I was 12 years old when my mom gave me my first journal. I never thought my life would take so many turns. I am just grateful that it’s written in books I can go back to. Even if the memories aren’t there, I can still read them as if they were. Like going back in time I feel the memory like it’s just a dream.
Emma the Mizfit 