The first night I was here, I went through a bunch of my old stuff. I made piles of books to get rid of and went through a thousand and one old papers of mine. I kept so much crap from high school, including boring handouts. All in a big trash bag now.

Also, I found my Prom pictures! And my Italy pictures! Cute stuff!!

Want to know what else I found? Every diary I've ever written! There are quite a few of them. I even flipped back through the pages and read a few entries from each of them. That was, in fact, the reason I kept them, after all. Knowing I'd love turning back the pages of my childhood and reading all the things I thought about back then. And you know somethng? I was absolutely wrong.

I did NOT enjoy reading the views of my much younger self! Okay, a few things were cute, but all the bad things were there, too, the anger towards other classmates, the feelings of lonliness during middle school, my confusion over my first "love." Which was really just a first crush. I shudder and say, "What was I thinking?"

I also read a few things from high school and wanted to smack the girl who wrote that stuff. How could I have been so egotistical, so snotty, so judgmental?? Even if I wasn't that way outwardly too much of the time, I thought all of those things at some point, long enough to deem them noteworthy. I'm embarrassed for that girl.

Not all of it sucked, mind you. But the stuff that sucked, sucked a lot. I guess I just don't like looking at how I used to be and the stuff I used to think. The worst one was my very first diary from second grade, when my OCD was fairly severe. I felt weirded out and kind of disturbed just reading it. I don't remember writing most of it. It's very odd. Stuff like, "And then I saw her pointing that word looks like painting but it is POINTING painting pointing and then I watched cartoons and now I am playing and now I am going to sleep." And LOTS of stuff like, "I tapped my pencil 2 times now 3 times I bit my lip 1 time."

Ack!

I guess even though it's weird to glance back at the way I used to be, it makes me really happy about who I am now. I feel like I've come a long way. I'm not as angry, judgmental, or obsessive as I used to be. I'm still a little obsessive at times. And that's because I do still have OCD, or probably more accurately, OCD tendencies, but nothing like when I was a child!! And not to the point where it interferes with my life, either.

One of the things I like about online journalling (vs. keeping paper diaries) is that it helps me teach myself not to obsess over what others will think of me. After all, it's out there for anyone on the 'net to see, and if I obsess over what all those people might think, I can't write. And I like writing! So I just do it, and I have to make myself let go of any associated worries. Some days are harder than others, but that's okay... that's life!

I actually prefer keeping an online journal. I think it causes me to think more thoroughly about how I feel and how I want to express my thoughts, and it's a lot more fun to read than the angsty, bizarre, nonsensical drivel of my formative years. That's not to say I'm going to stop writing in my paper journal, mind you. I'm just more aware of the fact that I might not necessarily enjoy looking back on it years from now.

"And that's... okay." --Stuart Smalley

~~Meg