I bought a new journal the other day. It was a very impulsive purchase, the sort that you weren't planning, but suddenly makes a lot of sense. Since I was 16 or so, I've always kept a journal, and there is a shelf in our living room filled with the old ones, at least a dozen of them, which no one including Dan will ever read unless I am dead or they have a serious wish to be so. It's kind of like classified information. I could tell you what's in those books, but then I'd have to kill you.
The reason this journal is different is that I still have half of my old one left. Usually, I write on every last page of a journal and then take a long time picking out a new one, like some people would treat buying a car. But as for my last journal, I just quit writing in it last year around the time that I was blogging every day to write updates about Aaron. Then, when I went back to it, I was overwhelmed at how much I would have to write in it for the huge gap in between entries to make sense. I tried a few times, but the reason I have always written in a journal is to help me sort out my thoughts, and right then, journaling would have involved writing out things that I had already thought about and prayed about until there was nothing I could write in a journal that would make matters any clearer to me. Because of the circumstances, my thoughts were remarkably easy for me to understand, and I was writing them here, both for my benefit and to help others stay connected to our family's story so they could pray for us. For a while, I needed to write about what was going on publicly so that we would have the support of our community in a difficult time more than I needed my own internal monologue. I don't know if I realized why I was doing it at the time, but I just gave up the journal.
Then on Sunday Dan and I were in Barnes and Noble, and I wandered over to the wall of journals -- stacks and stacks of beautifully-bound books full of empty, flawless pages. It was so tempting. They had a soft black leather one with lined paper just like I always have to have in my journals, and gold edging on the paper. I picked it up and flipped through it, and the thought came to me that there's no rule that I have to write on every page of my old journal before I can start a new one. And the more I think about it, I like the symbolism of a new book to write in, and leaving the old one unfinished. I still feel like there's nothing I could say in the old book that hasn't been said here on this web site and in my own mind plenty of times.
But now I have thoughts that aren't really ready for public consumption again. And when I picked up that journal, and realized that I wanted to write again, I just walked up to the counter and bought the journal. I've been writing in it for three days, and I'm so happy to have that part of my life back again. It feels like walking back into a quiet room at home after a year at the state fair. If I want to sit in that room and think unfinished, fragmented thoughts, it's alright, because there is no one but me to hear.
So here's to my new journal, and the hope that it will help me to present better-developed thoughts here. You all deserve that much.