A Tale Of Two Journals

In his 17th year of life, a young man was given the daily high school English class assignment of writing in a journal. He did. Every day. He soon found that writing was a natural thing for him and he enjoyed it so much that he even wrote in his journal on his off days from school.

He wrote about the girl that he wanted to ask out on a date but she was not in his social circle. He wrote about how empty he felt inside when his best friends moved away. He documented his personal life to the minute details. He wrote about how he hated his band director for being so strict when he was a sophomore. The same band director would soon become his ally in his senior year. Many years later, he would be asked to be a pallbearer at the great man’s funeral.

He wrote about riding around the Sonic repeatedly and seeing his friends parked and eating burgers and fries beside his enemies eating burgers and fries in their cars. He chose who to wave at and who to avoid. He documented his teenage angst with his parents.

His journal soon became his best friend. He could spill his feelings out and nobody would judge him.

And the black-and-white composition journal was always there. 

He kept the journal hidden in various places. But he always knew where that high school best friend was, just in case. 

 

Later in his life, around his 30th year, the now-grown man began another journal. This was an adult journal. He wrote about how he loved his wife of 10 years. How they just had fun together and how nice that was. He documented their trials of starting a family and the feelings involved with that situation. How other friends his age were buying their babies toys for Christmas but he and his wife sat in a perfect home, with a perfect Christmas tree made with perfect homemade decorations; but no children’s laughs or cries were there.

Then, the absolute excitement of the birth of their first child was tangible in his adult blue spiral-bound writing journal. The additional joy and birth of his second child a few years later was recorded with the same love as the first one. 

He worked as a nurse at night with head injuries and came home sometimes before getting sleep, he’d bring his journal up to date. It was filled with information and feelings about his life as an adult. His relationship with his parents was in there; the good and the bad. It was all there.

After writing in it, he put it aside and kept it hidden alongside his high school journal, but he always knew where that adult best friend was, just in case. 

 

Much later in his life, in his 61st year, he began to go through old things. Some keep, some give away and some repurpose. The two journals, and their contents, became a conflict for the aged man.

When he reread some of the entries they were filled with emotions and trials that he’d long overcome or forgotten.

Sometimes you can get a pain somewhere then when you wake up, it’s gone. And you forgot all about it. Life is much like that; you move past things that bother or excite you. Those things that were a problem are slowly replaced by new experiences and life events.

And soon you don’t even remember the bad things.

These two journals were much like this; some things he wanted to fondly remember and muse over later in his life. Other things, painful things that he’d documented, he’d rather those memories remain comfortably forgotten forever.

So now, in his older and wiser years, he pondered what If something were to happen to him, would he want his family to find those two journals and see his thoughts and feelings throughout his life? Written documentation of things and people and events that they never knew about?

About his thoughts and feelings that they never knew about. 

As life has a way of working itself out if we just have patience, the conflict over the disposition of the two journals worked itself out, completely by accident. 

He took the journals on a trip he was taking with a buddy. He had the intention of finding quiet time alone on this trip and tearing out pages of his life that he’d prefer to forget and leave the entries that had good meaning to him.

And that he felt his family would enjoy reading after he is gone. 

Two days after returning from his trip, he realized those journals were missing. He’d never found that time to go through them. Replaying the trip in his mind, he remembered them being in a box. And the box was used as a box for trash. And the box of trash, and life journals, were thrown away when they left the cabin. 

Today, somewhere in a dump in Abington, Virginia, smashed with someone else’s used spaghetti cans, baby diapers, and Marlboro light boxes, lies the man’s crumbled pages of his whole life’s recorded writings.  

He is not sad. Because he believes that things happen for a reason and he doesn’t believe in accidents. He also believes that nobody should know everything about anyone else.

He thinks that a person must maintain some sense of privacy and not be party to today’s ‘full disclosure’ and ‘full transparency’ trends. 

So, he is very happy that Life solved this dilemma for him. He’s at a better place now to record his life from a proper mature and safe perspective. He prefers to remember the good things behind him and leave the scars that have already healed themselves. 

The joys and excitement of life ahead, the recordings of his thoughts and feelings, along with the bruises that life can lead are now mostly forgotten like shipwrecks that have never been found and sit silently on the bottom of the ocean floor, perfectly at peace. 

And soon he will happily begin his third, collective,

and final,

journal.