So they will know me

One of my best friends won’t keep a journal specifically because she would never want it to be found and read by anyone when she dies.

I have another friend who has breathed laughter and spilled tears on the paper and ink of her mom’s old journals. Her mom left them, with notes, in places for her to find, and her words have been a treasure for my friend to linger over in her grief.

I want my loved ones to have that- to have me- so part of why I write is to keep a living piece of me for those I love.

I wish I knew so much more about the women in my family- especially my grandmothers, neither of whom I knew deeply, nor for long enough.

To be able to read their thoughts, the things that kept them up at night, or woke them up early in the morning. Their hopes and their pain, their worries and victories. Being able to read whatever they cared to write about would be such a gift. An opening to their heart and mind. A window into a place and time.

So I write to tell the truth- more accurately, to discover it.

To figure out the layers underneath the top of my feelings and the surface of my thoughts.

I write to be able to go back and see my old self, and to hear my old voice.

I write for me now, and for them later.

My kids’ frame of reference is still narrow and shallow, not only of me, but of life itself. In their eyes, my existence outside of them is limited, they don’t yet understand the details of all the other women I am.

They haven’t yet started to experience the changing seasons of their own lives, so I know they can’t yet appreciate, or even be curious about mine.

I write in hopes that as their purviews widen, they would want to dig deep into the folds of their own stories. And that my writing would give them a way to see into mine, too.

Maybe it will happen when I am gone, or maybe while I am still here.

Either way, I want them to read it all. To be able to see the real me.

All of me that they never knew.

To see how I felt, what I thought. The things I longed for and laughed over. The contradictions and the confidence. How I dreamed and despaired.

What other thing could I ever give them that would be more me, than my words?

After all, when I aim to see those I love, what is more real than glimpses they can show me of how they experience their world?

So I want to give that back.

I want my kids to know that, if nothing else, my words were proof that I always hoped, always dreamed and always believed.

Journaling through change:

What do you want to leave behind and why?

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