Spiral bound journals and tea

So I used to be quite the journal writer, however, I find myself writing about once a month in my journal now. I had about 7 volumes of journal writing I threw out on a whim one day. I thought, “baggage…maybe?” Or “what a bunch of self-centered hogwash,” but I’m not so sure I should call it that. In some of my most darkest hours I have sat up with a pen and a notebook and hashed out some of my most inner thoughts and dreams. In a way, a place of comfort and a way to bring me back to a better place than listening to  my negative humdrum voice.

I remember being 17 and so cool because I just got done doing a 30 minute yoga exercise (before I knew that everyone does yoga…), was making a cup of green tea (real Japanese green tea my friend from Japan gave me), and writing about how cool it would be to be back in California and living on the edge of Yosemite National Park…or, even visiting India! and trying to make a living there writing and drawing and becoming a Yogi master!!…hah…

I think it would have been better if I had kept that little journal, because I felt so free and independent then. I felt I could do anything. I even had more confidence in myself because I had distinguished myself as a strong individual. From that moment, I could have hitchhiked to California, or train hopped like Neal Cassady and lived out that great big bohemian American dream…

but alas, I think that I had too many dreams and so little of my effort was going into not creating them. Especially being an artist. I was so gun ho about it all, just life, just everything. But I’m stuck trying to figure out why I put myself down for so many years…and why I became such a negative, insecure person. Was I that person all along? Should I kept on writing, and giving myself reassurance that even though life sucks and there’s never enough money to do the things you want to do, at least you can say you still have some freedom to choose how you view your surroundings?? (There’s still a chance to dream about traveling you know? I’m saving $10 a week so that someday me and Isaac can go away to see the rainforest and a volcano or two. We just want to do something!) It’s in the way you see things. And I have been looking into a dirty mirror for a very long time. I have alienated Isaac so much. He calls me a “broken record” he’s been hearing this same sobbing story about how I’m not good enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not this or that.

my art teacher in high school said I had a psychological disorder. The last conversation I ever had with him really. I don’t really remember the technical term for it, but it’s more or less a self-delusion. I don’t know, I think we all in some way have it. In some way we tell ourselves, “oh no, I could never do that,” “I’m just not that smart,” or “I could never look good in a dress,”  and we always punish ourselves for not being “that.” “That” person who always seems to have everything. Well, I bet they’ve looked in a dirty mirror before too, you know. It’s just not healthy all the time though. You kind of have to get out the windex and wipe it off, and get the grungy thoughts that have been caked on that mirror for years, and really clean it, you know? And look at the real reflection of you.

I wrote a pact for myself. It sits in a origami box Isaac made me. It’s the teeniest little paper box, so cute and clever. It says:

well, it’s personal and if I say it then I will be defeating the purpose of doing what it is the damn thing says. I can keep telling myself over and over, but to do it, to really mean it too…I just don’t want to exploit its purpose.

…..

I say amen after I read my pact because I feel that God would say to me, “be who it is you are meant to be,” and I really think of it as a prayer.  A prayer to my heart, to tell my head to shut-up with this crap already!!