Something That Has Never Been Said

It is a deep need.

And the drum gets louder every day.

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I am going to say something that I don’t think I’ve said in my 36 years on this earth.

I legitimately need a new journal. I fully finished my journal. To the last page. 

Okay, need might be a little strong. I am a person who has a notebook for every play I’ve ever partially or fully written, a separate idea book, a physical planner, two notebooks devoted to just lists, and a notebook or two for jobs and (more often, it seems) job searching stuff. Technically, I am overrun with notebooks. But with journals? NOT ANYMORE.

Journals have always been a go-to gift from people and I have had journals since I was very young. Despite the sheer volume, my journaling habits are sporadic at best. They are usually a sounding board in times of distress. Sometimes I am journaling a lot, sometimes six months go by and I haven’t cracked the pages one time. The amount of journaling has probably slowed down even more since I started doing a daily mood tracker (March 2019) and therapy (August 2019). And there has always been a moment where I had a new journal on deck and so, would decide to leave the old one behind. What to do with the journals left behind is always the question.

During my time at my parents’ house in June, I did some cleaning out of their stuff with the purpose of organizing and making room. The main task was to move the family photos from photo albums into photo boxes. I started with photo albums from the chest in the living room which is also, I found out, where a lot of my Mom’s journals are. Later, when I reminded her about the journals and also let her know I did not read them, she mentioned that she wasn’t sure what to do with them. She noted that her journals are basically what my journals are, a collection of difficult times and swirling thoughts. She asked me if she should throw them away. I thought about the first time I visited in the pandemic, over the holidays in 2021, when I went through a box of my own journals. I am pretty sure I pulled out the pages, ripped them up, and threw everything away. I told my Mom it probably depended on what she wanted someone to find in the future. Maybe it was worth saving sections you want to remember and getting rid of the rest. 

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To finish this particular journal right now is fortuitous. It feels like the perfect timing; it feels very meaningful. It feels like a metaphor for this weird and uncomfortable time that is hopefully giving way to something new. And let me tell you, I know about metaphors. I would say metaphors are one of my special skills.

This blue journal with the white, leathery, flowery looking detail has been with me for a decade. It was a gift from my former co-worker and friend Shannon*. As far as I remember, it was accompanied, in some fashion, with the words, “I hope you write beautiful things in here.”

The first sentence from the first entry dated June 20, 2013 is, “Just around two months from now I will be on my way, getting ready to go, or potentially already in New York City.”

It was actually pretty easy for me to get rid of my old journals. They had served their purpose by existing but I didn’t need all those reminders. My current journal is a catalog of my (first) ten years in New York and even though it is completely full, I’m not sure it has served its whole purpose. Granted, I just finished it last night so the starry eyed emotional attachment is strong. The voices of the Samanthas that live in those pages have not yet dissipated into the air. They have more things to say. 

Yesterday, when I sat down to write — just kidding, I had been sitting all day— yesterday, after I pulled out my journal and before I started writing, I counted the blank pages left. Eight. I had determined that this would be the last entry no matter what but I was pretty sure I didn’t have eight full pages of things to say. I was ready to leave a few blank pages at the back or write really large for a couple of pages or draw out a quote or something. 

I had eight full pages of things to say. 

The anxiety has been high this weekend which, ultimately, is why I pulled out the journal. There are so many unknowns in my life right now and the anxiety from that tends to live deep in my belly and tingles in the center of my palms. Since I’ve been unemployed, the overall anxiety has been higher than normal anyway, usually appearing around mid-afternoon for a couple of hours. It’s historically common for my anxiety to appear mid-afternoons. I think it’s when my body realizes that another day is nearly done and whatever situation needs addressing, right now jobs and finances, has not been fixed, solved, what have you. It usually calms down by evening. But not yesterday. Yesterday it was an all-day guest that hung out in all the usual places and also set up camp in my chest. 

So, I should not have been surprised that I had eight full pages of things to write through. 

One of the things I like about journaling is that so much time can pass without notice. I had my journal open for roughly six hours. I did not write that whole time but I did finish writing just about bedtime.

In the middle of that and against my better judgment, I started at the beginning of the journal and read the first twenty pages or so. I read the lead-up to the move and the first few months in New York. I read about worries and feelings I still have. And I read about events and feelings that I had forgotten and honestly, would have been better left to distant memories. 

Because that’s the thing, right? That is why I was so ready and able to get rid of the older journals. That is why I told my Mom to think about who might read them in the future, including herself, if she decided to keep her own journals. Some of it is just too painful to reread. Or, at least, it is when you use your journal as an inventory of your traumas. Some things you need to write down to free them but once they are free, you don’t necessarily need to call them back home for a visit. 

I am certain if I read through the whole journal I would laugh a lot and notice growth, the ways in which I have changed and the ways in which I haven’t changed at all. I could track all the differences in my handwriting and how those match the emotions of the entries at the time they were written. Like I said, I don’t think the voices of past Samantha are done talking to me yet but I also know I don’t need to be in direct conversation with them. 

That is the thing about keeping a journal, it is both permanent and fleeting. The point is to get stuff out. But anything having to do with “the stuff” you have to, unfortunately, deal with in the “real world.”  

If I had gone back and reread old journal entries in any other time, I might have fully spiraled. I might have stopped writing mid-entry, closed the journal dramatically, and laid down for as long as possible. What I reread hit me, of course. There is one event in particular that stuck out, that I didn’t realize until now, was still echoing through the growth (therapy).

But I didn’t. I didn’t fully spiral. Instead, I wrote this sentence: “Rereading those pages in the midst of this final entry in this particular journal was a good push, a good reminder of how good and important change can be if you let it happen.” 

Growing pains is not just a sitcom from the 80s, it is something that keeps happening. I truly feel like I’m in a sort of new adolescence. My body is weird, I don’t know what my limbs are doing most of the time, my brain feels both fuzzy and clear, and so many things feel completely new, like I haven’t done them before. I keep saying phrases like, “lean in” (not in Sheryl Sandberg way, I think we’ve culturally moved away from that), “run with it,” and “steering into the skid.” I am a walking cliche; recently I mentioned to a friend that my life feels so wibbly wobbly these days and then I realized that the cereal I had bought earlier that day was Life. I am doing my best to be open about this whole thing because it is hard and because I think it will be helpful, in some way? Mostly I am tired of waiting; I am tired of wasting time. 

Now, I am on the look-out for a new journal. I do have a nice mostly empty one I got in Turkey in undergrad, the only time I’ve been to Europe, but that’s mostly decor at this point. So, I don’t have one on deck. And I don’t know exactly what I am looking for in a new journal. I think I will know it when I see it. I’m willing to take my time and find something that is really meaningful. Something full of metaphors. I can’t not be full of metaphors.

As the last line in the last entry of this decade-old journal says:

On to the next.

*If you follow DIY and/or garbage related things, you might have encountered Shannon on Instagram. She has an account called Fix the Faucette where she is renovating her house. But she is mostly well known for the land around the house which she calls the Trash Forest. Every Tuesday she does treasure hunts while she’s cleaning it. It all started with a cauldron. Check it out. 

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