finding my voice
At a Mormon feminist retreat this weekend, one of the sessions was about narrating your story and I felt such a longing for the time when I first started this journal, and the bits of my soul that I recorded and preserved. I’ve had spurts throughout my life when I’d attempt to be a great journallingist (compared to being a journalist). In junior high, I poured out my loneliness and crushes and sins into our old computer, saved carefully on floppy disks that I no longer have access to (they’ve either been lost or can’t be opened). In college, I wrote my words in bound books, but sporadically; long, passioned descriptions of the events of my life. Once my car was broken into, and a bag containing my journal was stolen. The absence of my thoughts from that time gnaws on me to this day, more than any other valuables lost. And then gradually, I found myself here, where I opened up and shared my life to the anonymous public and then to friends and family when they discovered my blog.
There’s so many small details from the last five+ years that I have lost because my journalling petered out, memories forgotten. I try to recreate them at the end of the year, but that’s relying on vague Facebook confessions and photos taken, and there are so many holes (also I am bad about getting them done on time).
For much of the last five years, I would open up this journal and try to write, the words stuck beside my inner turmoil about so many things: my faith and how it wasn’t fitting quite right anymore, even though I desperately wanted it to; singleness and trying to adjust to a life that I never thought I’d have; imposter syndrome; anxiety over work, etc, etc. So I didn’t write and it was harder to come back and try to write.
Anyhow. With the slow destruction of LJ and the migration away of so much of fandom, I’ve been hit with nostalgia and with a need to hold on a little longer. So I’m going to try blogging again this month. Yay?
LJ apparently celebrated their 18th birthday (and then sold us all to the dictatorship next to Alaska). I haven’t been here the whole 18 years – but I was sort of shocked to see that it’s been well over a decade – this is my entire 30s and a good chunk of my 20s encapsulated here in fragmented form. No wonder I am grieving at the loss.
Looking forward to hearing/reading your voice again 🙂
Thank you! I’ve missed being around here!