Why It's Hard to Journal Now

If you scroll down on my page to the first posts in 2020, I shared what I learned after 4 years of keeping a journal. I have always kept notebooks and diaries. I remember being little and taking them on car rides and pretending to map out our route onto the pages and spilling random secrets and complaints about school. Starting around age 10, I wrote in a little journal more regularly. It was right around the time that my dad started dating my step-mom and it is funny to read from a child's perspective going on outings with my dad's "friend".

During the height of middle school, I was writing pages every day. Journalling was something I looked forward to every day, and kids would always ask to see what was in my journal. It was almost a junk journal. I would keep random bits of brochures, candy wrappers, receipts, notes passed to me, wristbands, and more. I never minded if people read my journal, I even kept a "signatures" page at the back.

My journal was there for me during the harder parts of being a teenager. It helped me vent about family conflicts, be excited about things that were "embarrassing", process grief of losing family members and pets, and express my creativity with drawings and collages.

Present day, I will pick up a journal, start to write, and feel unable to continue. I cherish my filled books, but I can't bring myself to log any more thoughts.

After I wrote that blog post during the uncertainty of Covid-19, I started to get bored of writing in my journal. Every day, stuck in the house, the news was deplorable, and that was all there was to write about. It became a cycle, and I stopped writing.

I fell into a deep depression during my second and third year at college. I had been on three or four rounds of new medications and nothing was helping. Every time I went to see the counselor on campus, I was given something new to ingest without being given any mental tools. Through that time, I started to journal again. Nothing seemed real, it was like I was a video game character being controlled by someone I couldn't see, and no actions meant anything.

Sitting down to write would produce emotions I couldn't handle, it always made things worse for me. Even if I had a good day, I'd write about what happened, then slowly write about how I didn't deserve it, what I should have done, how I'm messing up everything without being able to stop it, and question why I felt so horrible when nothing was actually wrong in my life. The guilt of existing being in ink on a page made me want to set the journal on fire.

I do not re-read my entries from that time.

Journalling aids in processing things in your life, but I didn't need to process what I spent all day ruminating about. Making it more "real" made it so much worse. The journal became physical proof of my failure.

Instead of writing my life, I became reckless. I spent money I didn't have, I hung out with people I shouldn't have, and I was partying regularly. I barely knew anyone, but I was never afraid. If anyone asked if I wanted to go anywhere I always said "yes". I was doing the bare minimum of being alive while throwing myself into situations that I thought would make me feel real. I lived off of potatoes, plain spaghetti, cans of chili, tons of energy drinks, and recreational drugs.

It is crazy to think that once I started to pull back on the leashes of the life that was running away from me, I started blogging again. It was then that I published the first Depression Diaries post and tried desperately to be "me" again, whoever that was.

I would try to journal again, purely for memories and not to put myself down, and I was successful for the few entries that I did write. It just never felt the same, nor was it fulfilling.

Today, I have fond childhood memories associated with keeping a diary or a journal, but I also haven't been able to write in one for about two years. I think by writing this post, I officially retire from ever trying again. Of course, there are notebooks for different things, but I will never write about my daily life in a bound notebook.

My blog is my journal. Yes, it is public, but I think that aspect is really beneficial for me. Blogging helps me keep a positive attitude and step outside of my own head and surround myself with people who provide different perspectives and life experiences. Even though my love of blogging in part has to do with my struggles with mental health, I don't talk about it much anymore.

I want to be a positive and optimistic presence here, but it is important for me to also share where I have been and the things that I have gone through with mental health. It is a lot, more than I will ever be able to share here. Many believe that people don't change. There's a lot about a person that I agree will never change, but experiences change a person. The core may stay the same, but the reactions are totally different based on what a person has gone through.

I never thought I wouldn't love writing by hand anymore. That is a silly, small thing to have changed about a person, but it was such an important part of my life that to me, it feels like a change in myself. I am happy that I won't be able to share the extent of my mental health struggles in the past, that barrier doesn't exist for me in my journal. I need that boundary of self preservation. I am self aware enough to resist being fully self aware, ignorance is bliss. I will get there when I am ready to.

What is something you used to love, but will never be able to do again?