After a long hiatus from writing regularly, I am (at least at the moment) back on the grind again. While I haven’t started contributing to my bigger writing project (I’m Not Ok) as of yet, I have been doing my best to write everyday.

Most days, it’s just a journal entry. But as I wrote the other day (When Your Main Character is Really Just You), sometimes when I journal I make these huge self-discoveries that maybe I knew subconsciously, but it didn’t really HIT me until I wrote it down.

When I was younger, writing was all I did. It was all I wanted to do. I was blessed to be 1-to-1 with a laptop through high school, and I would avoid doing classwork because I was working on a story or National Novel Writing Month (sorry mom and past teachers). It was so much simpler back then to find the time to write.

It’s so often that those therapeutic hobbies that pulled us through hard times get thrown to the wayside as we get older, because our priorities change. We stop prioritizing ourself, and instead let our business and social lives reign supreme. But where does that leave us sometimes?

I like to look back at old blog stats when I was blogging all the time, primarily 2015/2016. I was in a good place then: working in a library part time; great work/life balance; solid finances; just me, Brad, and our first dog together Xena; I was writing all the time. Things are different now: full time teacher (of seventh graders); shoddy work/life balance; sometimes feeling like we’re just making it financially; three dogs is a lot more work than one; and I stopped writing.

Last fall, when I felt myself falling into a depression, I started picking up my pen again. While I was writing chunks of “I’m Not Ok,” I was also occasionally writing random (depressing) poems that should’ve thrown some red flags. Though to be honest, I knew how I was feeling. But I felt weak for wanting to seek help. I was stronger than that (I wasn’t).

This poem sits in my journal currently from November 2019:

Subconsciously, I’ve always turned to writing to pull me through hard times. When I felt I had no one to talk to, my journal was there. Even if I didn’t write all the time, I was never without a journal and a pen. There is just something therapeutic about getting your emotions onto paper. Paper doesn’t judge; paper doesn’t make faces; paper doesn’t go whisper about you behind your back to another person you thought was your friend.

Lately, as I’ve felt myself falling back, I once again turned to paper. I started journaling (occasionally) on June 29th. It was about as negative of a journal entry as one could write. Reading it back, I’m not surprised that on July 13th I wrote about considering seeking a therapist. I don’t know if I would have made that decision in my brain alone. As I wrote in my journal, “self-sabotage is my secret power.” On July 19th, I made the call. Since then, I have written 11 pages in my journal.

I’m not magically cured. I’ve learned that self-sabotage really is my secret power, and I’m working through challenging those thoughts (sounds easy right? it’s not).

Writing regularly again has helped me process so many things over the past 3 weeks. I’m still an anxious mess about the things going on in my life right now, because there are a lot of things, but for getting me this far, I think a big thanks goes to my journal.

If teaching is the career path I stay in, I hope I continue as a reading & writing teacher. There is just too much power in words on a page, and I want to do all I can to show others who – like me – can be afraid to speak up, to let the words light the path to self-discovery.

Perhaps you discover the answer to your problems, or perhaps you realize that you can’t solve these problems on your own this time. Writing through an emotional journey can show you, and has shown me, so much more than we thought we’d ever discover.