An ode to the Journals of my life

Would you say you have a relationship with your journal(s)? If you do, you know what I mean when I tell you about my relationship with my diary/journal today. Because, to me, it’s a friend to hold close in the darkness…

To have a journal, wether it is a private diary or an art journal (I always have at least one of each), is to become friends with a notebook. That is, you want to spend time with it, a lot of time.

You long for it (or what it gives to you in form of comfort, creative outlet or personal space) when you are away from it. It is that kind of relationship/bond that makes you fill a whole journal and not abandon it halfway through. Without this kind of bond/relation, the journal gets lost (at least here) in a pile of paper to not be looked at again. Or I shelf it and then totally forget that it exist because it doesn’t exist in my mind. I don’t “care for it” in a way, I don’t reach for it, I forget about it.

Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. … You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.
John Garner [via NYT]

I have always had close relationships with my notebooks. I used to name and talk to my diary when I was a kid, and since they are still there in a box, all of them, I feel I trust them. They’re there after friends have moved away or grown out of me. I guess the notebooks I called diaries are the most loyal and trustworthiest of friends.

Not to say I don’t need (and long for) human friends, but from life experience, I know notebooks to be more faithful and present, and they always have the time to listen to me going on about my fears, problems and anxieties. :-)

Notebooks are, in many many ways, better than men. Boyfriends can do a lot that notebooks could never (ahem!) so I wouldn’t want to be without guys in my life, but gosh, how my diaries were there for me when boyfriend this or that were not. Without my diary listening to my loud cries, I don’t think I would’ve survived.

Maybe I have been too attached to a notebook in my life, who knows. I have certainly been very introspective, introverted and I’ve always loved staying at home a lot, looking into books and notebooks although my life. I could maybe have tried going out more, but for whatever reasons I didn’t, and I haven’t. I have been me, and my notebooks became part of that story.

My journals are a part of my life and I keep them close, still. They’re with me in my life story and as the days unfold I tell them things. Secrets but mostly the mundane. And I am for ever grateful for notebooks, call them diaries or journals or notebooks or pages of comfort. They are my friends, forever.