Last week I closed the cover of my fifth Moleskine journal. Nine years of entries, the first one beginning September 8, 2015.
The journals chart a decade of the most unanticipated personal growth. My rejection of the conservative evangelical faith I was devoted to, tumultuous years of self-employment living below the poverty line, years in therapy uncovering complex childhood sexual trauma. There are fourteen sharehouses, multiple attempts at post-graduate degrees, and a couple of cumulative years on the road: driving across Europe, catching buses across South East Asia, road-tripping the Aussie coastline with girlfriends. There is therapy and healing, drugs and a revolving door of men. In these pages I buy businesses, a motorbike and, as of month ago, a crumbling fibro house out in the country.
I haven’t spent much time re-reading my journal entries. I feel suffocated by my self-indulgence. I can see why Helen Garner, upon reading her journals written in the years before 1978, threw them into a fire. She writes in The Guardian:
“I did this because when I went through the cartons of exercise books one day, looking for what I’d written around the time of the dramatic dismissal of the Whitlam government, I found to my astonishment that I hadn’t even mentioned it.
That day, crouching over the crates in the laundry, I was soon so bored with my younger self and her droning sentimental concerns that there was nothing for it – this shit had to go.”
Last week, I made space for my younger self and her droning sentimental concerns. Most of the time, she’s boring and self-absorbed and hurt and afraid and lonely and completely unaware of the global goings on. But I decided to loosen that judgement, if only for a little, and explore three things:
Time as a circle
September is Spring. It is the time of Marrai’yunggory in the Dharawal calendar, where I live. It is a time of transition. Of new beginnings. Of endings.
In Septembers: the month I was first raped as an adult (Journal 1), the beginning of two relationships, the ending of three. There is one friend that appears in September in six of the nine years I have been writing. Often out of the blue. There is flux, always. And the patterns that emerge in these times of flux are written into each entry (sense of unsafety, the desire to run, the inability to sit still).
Reading the Septembers reminded me of these lines in Braiding Sweetgrass by botanist Robin Kimmerer (she has a new book coming out in November called The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance, which sounds damn good):
“[…] in the popular way of thinking, history draws a time ‘line’, as if time marched in lockstep in only one direction. Some people say that time is a river into which we can step but once, as it flows in a straight path to the sea. But Nanabozho’s people know time as a circle. Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself – its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. All things that were will come again.”
There are recurring symbols in these entries. Things that would not have been acknowledged had I read my journals chronologically. This sense of time as a circle emerges most poignantly in medicine journeys I’ve been on, but also here, in my writing.
The deception/poetry of curation
What you choose to re-write and disregard is an interesting process. The process of curation changes the framing, changes the interpretation of the message. We make assumptions in the inbetweens. I have enjoyed flicking through the Septembers and typing paragraphs into a Word document for a later project.
I shared a couple of lines from my journals on Instagram recently:
2015: I skulled 500mL of beer. Yup, me!!!
2016: Today it’s Father’s Day. We made an apple pie and I topped it with salt instead of sugar.
2017: I want a new creative project. I want financial security. I want to feel a sense of achievement about something.
2018: Why can’t I just sit here and embrace this uncomfortable feeling and let it wash over me?!
2019: I have a job interview today. I don’t know if I want it??? A real job I have to go to every day??? What if I hate it? Then I will have to quit. Blaaahhhh.
2020: Modern dating is weird because you meet someone for the first time and then you sleep with them on the first date and then you have to go back to the beginning to get to know who they are as a person all the while maintaining the expression of love and intimacy until you wait for some sign that tells you to commit with more intention.
2021: I’m attached to all the effort I’ve put into my little apartment. All the afternoons questioning where I should hang my art, where I should put the couch… my plants. The prospect of a move feels emotional and I feel silly for ascribing so much sentiment to the placement of things.
2022: Remember those oil pastel paintings? You’d cover the whole page in rainbow crayons and then you’d paint it black. I never knew there was colour underneath me. Now I have a tiny toothpick and I’m just scratching away. It will take some time but I’m seeing colour.
2023: It really feels as though I’m riding out of something. It feels tangible. I feel strong. Like a shoot of green bursting from the soil.
2024: I am hopeful, hopeful, hopeful.
These lines paint a picture, but a very different picture from the one in the privacy of my Word document, and again in my journal. What stories to tell? What feelings to evoke? I suppose it’s similar to what we choose and do not choose to share on social media. Always presenting statues, never an untouched block of stone.
The sameness of my feelings
What has been funny to see, as I read through the years, is that my laments, joys, and heartbreaks are all the same. They’re just wearing different clothes.
“I am not good enough” — for this relationship, for this job, for this community
“I feel so alone” — at this party, in this relationship, in singleness
“If they loved me they would” — tell me, show me, be there when I need them
“I am so in love” — with this person, with this life, with this mountain that I find myself on top of
“I am afraid” — that I’m making the wrong decision, that I won’t be able to pay my rent, that this opportunity is not as good as it seems
At the heart of every crossroads are the same fears.
~
These journals emerged as an act of resistance, during a time when I had little memory of and great distance from my childhood. As I have cleaned the glass that was once smeared with grease and oil, I can see that my journals remain to ensure my survival. If the glass becomes greasy once again, the stories have been written.
I will never forget.