A Case for Journaling

The annual Comber Christmas tradition is to free the artificial Christmas tree out of the attic. Every year this means facing THE BEAST. The Beast is everything we've accumulated that never found a proper home: childhood memorabilia, seasonal things, assortments of wires and out dated electronics, and boxes we have yet to unpack from our move 16 months ago. Normally, we let the Beast out for an hour or two and put it back in again while promising our selves that we will organize and tame it for next year. This is the year. I can feel it. The Beast will be conquered just as soon as I finish this post... oh, look a BuzzFeed quiz...

#UnpackingTheAttic #WhyIsAllTheXmasStuffInTheBack #GetReadyFreeCycle #VirtualYardSaleComingSoon #WillNotJustDealWithItNextYear #HoardersAtticEdition
#KeepSellGiveAwayToss

And... Then, I found my journal from when I was 16... oh, no.

They're multiplying...

Between shifting through old papers and school projects, cards and photos, little scraps of paper that contain love notes from Kid 2, and so many other things that were once deemed too special to throw away but too miscellaneous to take up space anywhere other than our attic, I found these journals. My ghost of teenage past had arrived, and like the ghosts of Dickens' Christmas lore, she came with a lesson. 

If you asked me to describe myself from high school, I would have told you about the boys I dated and my friends rather than presenting a clear concept of the person I was 20 years ago. Something happened that muddled my memories of myself, so my identity became wrapped up in the people who once approved of me and found me worthy of their time. 

Enter the ghost of teenage past to roll her eyes and point in pugnacious fashion to the pages littered with evidence of a more complete person than I remember. Someone who could stand her own. Someone who was a friend to herself and preferred time alone. The only mention of boyfriends are the reminders to myself to call them. The rest of the pages are filled with a wild stream of consciousness about books I read, plans for the future, quotes I found insightful or funny, and stories/poems. 

When I wonder about my previous notions of who I was and why my relationships dictated my concept of my teenage identity, I have a theory. The moments with the most heightened emotions caused highlights in time so when the past was condensed, I remembered those things: key relationships, embarrassing moments, the moments that I (if social media existed beyond AIM) would have catalogued, etc. and subtracted out the whole personhood of that time. I don't know if the theory is correct, but my journals from teenagelandia stand to prove one thing: that keeping a journal of the things that seem too mundane, too personal, too ordinary, or too "you" to share with the social media hive mind might be the key to understanding one's humanity in the future. With this in mind, I'm sincerely hoping Kid 2 keeps up with her journaling so I can point to her journals years from now when all she remembers about high school is her goofy boyfriend.