when I was a teenager, I burned all my journals because I didn’t want anyone knowing my thoughts. Or it was just to fit my dramatic emo aesthetic. Either way, I’m sad to not be able to look back on those times. Little me could have used empathetic older me.
I’ve kept all of my journals since. Some of them are really hard to look back on and bring me back to really dark times in my life. I like having them available to me though. I like to imagine my kids or my grandkids reading through them someday and understanding me as a whole human, not just as mother or grandmother.
I tend to write a lot more when I’m sad or depressed, so I’ve been working on writing during the good times too.
Jun 6, 2024
Related Recs
🖋
I was cleaning today and stumbled upon journals from 8-10 years ago. I’m so grateful that I kept them because they are a reminder of how much I’ve grown, the many lives I’ve lived, and the people that have come and gone.
a side note is that I wasn’t particularly fond of the prose lol
Aug 17, 2024
🖊
I love putting my feelings on paper, it helps me to know that they’re real. Plus, I have way too many thoughts, I can’t hold all that in my head. Some things are best left in a notebook than in the body. I have an incredibly warped sense of time, so I sometimes reread journals to remind myself of what has happened in my life. And wow, there’s nothing more powerful than a preteen’s unbridled emotions and Ashley you will pay for what you did in the 5th grade. If I die and someone finds all of my journals please publish them, there’s some good tea in there and I’m not afraid of burning bridges in the afterlife. Get a good pen, find a nice notebook, and put it all down.
Oct 27, 2023
📓
Sometimes painful and not for everyone, but goddamn sometimes it feels good to know what you’ve overcome. A HUGE practice in being kind to all versions of yourself, past and present. I sometimes annotate my old ones in the margins, give myself a little “good luck.”
May 24, 2024
Top Recs from @mossyelfie
🚫
This has become the norm and every day I grow more disturbed. I understand if somebody is behaving in a harmful way, that is good to document and put out there. But as a whole, it seems, we have become so comfortable with recording people just living their lives. I saw a video of a guy working and the caption of the video was that he was so hot, we needed to find him!!! Why are you providing the Internet with his face and location instead of just going up to talk to him? I saw another of two people on the subway, seemingly a couple, having a very emotional moment. How would you feel if you open up an app and saw a video like that of yourself? I don’t like this level of sibling society surveillance. Why are you videoing an elderly person with sad music dubbed over it to gain likes? It is WEIRD. Don’t even get me started on videos of children. It is WEIRD to use a stranger without their consent to get some kind of fake validation. Get a life.
I don’t mean to come on here and share something so negative, I just don’t have anywhere else to put it and it’s gnawing at me.
Oct 7, 2024
Feb 23, 2025
🧠
I’m curious what your brains are like
1d ago