I began to start writing things down in the 6th grade. Life got extremely chaotic and I had no other choice than to turn to my old-fashioned, white Macbook. I can remember it clearly; the yelling and screaming began to disappear and I was in my own world. I felt drops of water roll down my cheeks and onto my keyboard. I was becoming even more emotional, and I then started to hate myself, but I continued writing. I thought that because I was crying I wasn’t strong, and I would never get through life at this rate. I kept writing and began to wipe the tears off of my face. I soon realized I was wrong and crying was OK. I was able to let all of my feelings and thoughts out on paper, and doing so helped me to revisit those thoughts. All through my years of schooling writing never felt natural to me until that day.
Literacy leads to emotional intelligence, meaning the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. Journaling is a form of literacy, and without it, I don't think I'd be the person I am today.
Journaling allowed me to find my purpose in writing. Through writing I am able to process and organize my thoughts; it allows me to discover. In “Why I Write” by Terry Tempest Williams she explains to her audience her reasoning and love for writing. Williams goes on and on, for a little over a page, listing multiple reasons about his purpose in writing. She states, “I write to make peace with the things I cannot control” (Williams 80). Williams and I have this in common, we both write for personal reasons. We write to reflect on our experiences and later comprehend those thoughts and move on with our lives.
I can’t define my past in one word. Heck, I can’t define my past in one sentence. I’ve experienced so much in my life that no child should ever have to. When I read journals I've written in the past, I'm able to experience the emotions that caused me to write what I've written. Journaling allows us to look back on a positive note and I hope you find it useful.
