archive of mine

9:07 pm

Tuesday, September 5, 2023 8:26 PM

I received the very first journal I would use again at my high school graduation party as a going away gift from a family friend. When I was younger, I came across a school counselor that encouraged me to start using one, and so I did, only to find out one of my parents located it and was reading it or them the entire time. And I found out when they got upset and used the personal contents of the journal to humiliate me in front of the entire household. Safe to say I never picked up another journal again because it no longer felt like a safe space to vocalize my feelings. So I learned to bottle everything up and keep it inside because I could never really open up to my parents either. It seemed as though they never understood, and I don't mean that in a "dark teenage phase" kind of way lol.

But that first journal after all that time came to mean a lot to me. Not right away, but eventually. I was homeless throughout my senior year. In and out of airbnbs and also stayed in motels/hotels most of the time. I would even miss weeks of school sometimes because we had to hop back and forth from state to state in order to guarantee a roof over our heads. That, on top of the other issues I was facing within my family (parents separating, my father being estranged, even being apart of a cult for a time period, which caused a spike in my anxiety plus still never having anyone I could truly communicate with) caused me to constantly be in survival mode. Once my parents separated we were honestly never stable and I never really had a safe space to process everything I had been through or breathe. I was fighting both at home and at school. And although I still graduated in the top of my class, it still wasn't enough.

All that changed when I went to college because that is when everything started to hit me. It hit me just how much I had not been processing everything and bottling everything up. Because I think I viewed college as the one place that would offer me a peaceful, quiet place to work on my goals, but because my mental was not intact, I wasn't truly able to focus and everything kept pulling at me at once. The financial aid I was receiving kept being manipulated out of my hands, I realized the one parent I thought I could rely on as not as supportive or for me as I thought. So while one parent was absent, another was money hungry and did not care about my success behind the scenes, only about how it made them look good. And slowly everything else started to crash and burn. I tried counseling offices, it did not help. I tried consulting with my friends, no help. There was nothing and nobody to hold me up but me and I was barely making it. I was alone. So, I started writing again and it changed things for me. My journal became my safe space and my holy grail. And it all quickly helped me realize that you can spend all your time chasing dreams and achievements, but once you get there it feels like what's next? Those moments bring temporary satisfaction and never the full peace and satisfaction you think will. Because even with the change of environment, you still carry everything with you. And I'm not saying do not be proud of your achievements, just that all of your happiness should not be reliant on them. That was when I learned peace is not where I was but within (although some places can be more peaceful than others, of course). And that happiness should not be chased as it is an emotion and all emotions, both good and bad, are temporary. Emotions come and go. Peace does not. And if you can learn to have peace and be grateful for the present while chasing the future you want, well, you've got it made. Become the person you see in the future in your present and watch how that changes things. Because that future is determined by now. 

And always remember that as long as you have another day, you have another chance.