it’s my therapy

I love to write. I love expressing myself. I’m not the type to openly share my feelings with others (friends included) and feel like I’m being bothersome to the poor man that just came home from a 13-hour shift (Ariel) so I blog. It’s the only way I can release the numerous things I want to blabber on about. Why? Because I’m a woman and I have to blabber dammit, that’s why.

I’ve always kept a little journal around for as long as I can remember. Mostly it was because I was taught that keeping a journal was important but it was partly due to me wanting to keep a record of my life. It wasn’t filled with the most interesting things but I felt they were pretty important at the time.

They’re all gone though. I don’t know where the really old ones went but it’s okay. Ariel can’t get to them and I don’t have to shudder at being reminded by how immature I was.

Like most people, I can type so much faster than I can write (probably x7 faster and much more legible) so I always kept a file on my computer/laptop just for my thoughts. That was until I dated a paranoid freak who snooped into everything and completely destroyed the joy of writing. I ripped apart and recycled the journals I kept because he got to those too. I even murdered my laptop that same night because I was furious and felt betrayed. But it wasn’t just because he dug through my thoughts that made me angry. He was translating everything that I wrote wrong and started to accuse me of things that my words were far from illustrating. Read back a few sentences when I called him a paranoid freak. Paranoid was an understatement.

Anyways, I stopped writing and just kept all my thoughts to myself for as long as I could. I confided what I could to a few close friends but that was pretty much it. I stopped writing during the duration of the few years I stayed in that miserable relationship with the guy.

When I packed my bags and left that terrible SOB, I came back to my home state an angry mess (not because I couldn’t write but because the few years of my life with that guy was really terrible). Ariel, my Husband, had to spend the first few years of our relationship putting back the pieces of me back together. But during that time, I had also begun to start writing again and it was actually Ariel who inspired me to write once more. By that time I was so used to keeping every little thought locked away in my head somewhere but you know how when you’re so full of awe by everything? That’s how Ariel made me feel. Although it was difficult, it was easier to contain the negative thoughts I had then it was trying to contain the beautiful joy Ariel made me feel. So, I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote about the good, the ugly, and everything in between.

 
I keep this pink journal around that I call my “A-ha!” book. It’s where I jot down my inspirations and thoughts. It has my prayer requests written in it and lists of topics from pet peeves to favorite people/places/things. There are some things that I wouldn’t blog about but most of my blog entries were inspired by the things I wrote in my A-ha! book. I also carry around a much smaller (and lighter) notebook around to quickly jot down things I want to write more in-depth about in the pink book.

 
In all, I blog (& write) because it’s my therapy. It’s the only place I can really express who I am without feeling like a burden on others. It’s the one place you can really get to know me as I am instead of meeting me as a person who only shows what I want you to know.

Blogging and keeping a journal has also helped me express myself better. Having been raised by an angry woman, I became programmed to filter just the right things to say to keep her from blowing up. It was really difficult for a long period of my young adult life to be honest with others and how I felt in certain situations but blogging and keeping a journal has helped me break free of that. It was another healing tool that’s helped me the past few years. :)

P.S. Ariel reads my blog and I don’t mind that at all. I leave my A-ha! book out anywhere I want and can trust that he won’t dig through it although I wouldn’t mind that as well. We have a healthy way of communicating (something that we both had to learn along the way of course) so we have nothing to hide from each other. I have nothing to hide from him.