The Blue Notebook

There was a notebook. It was a small, blue spiral notebook. 

In this notebook, I wrote. I wrote about everything. 

In this notebook, there was an outpouring. An outpouring of soul and spirit and pain and loss and hate and love and grief. We were never separated, this notebook and I.

 Inside it, I wrote everything. All of the negative thoughts and pain that i had experienced. Everything. 

You worthless bitch. What gives you the right to complain.

 You don't have depression, you're nothing more than an attention seeker. 

No one will ever love the real you. 

No one will ever see you. 

Your're so ugly.

 It had everything. 

Of course, no one could ever find out about this notebook, the very literal and physical representation of my very soul. So I hid it in different places in my room every night. It was the skeleton in my closet, the monster under my bed, the bad dreams under my pillow. 

But in this way, it was contained. That blue notebook hid everything i thought, and kept it out of my head. 

Then one day, it happened.

It was a blue day, and my mother and I were sitting by the pool, both in our bathing suits. We'd been talking, about the past year, mom's art...girl talk, basically. then she said it. 

"Can I talk to you about something?"

"Sure," I said. 

"So I was cleaning you room the other day, and I was looking through you old notebooks. And I found this blue notebook...and read it. "

Those words struck a blow. I was stunned with the weight. She knew. She knew about everything. She had read my soul, looked upon the most vulnerable parts of me, the very worst of myself. There were, for once, no words to describe how I felt. 

She hates you. Now she knows you, she'll never think of you the same way again. You can't be perfect grace any more. 

"How could you," I finally forced out, tears hiding behind my eyes.  "YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO LOOK IN THAT NOTEBOOK!" 

My mother looked at me, and I saw kindness in her eyes. 

"I love you. No matter what, no matter who, no matter what you feel or what you think, I love you." 

That was the moment, I think, when I realized. I realized this notebook, instead of a hiding place for everything, had become this way of communicating with my mother. It wasn't a prison any more. It was a road. A road to healing. 

I still have the notebook. It sits in the corner of my room, in the open. Sometimes, mom uses my words for her art, and yesterday, i wrote what i had decided would be the final entry. 

its feels strangely good, to bare your soul completely.