Journaling, Migraine

I started keeping a journal when I was 18, kept the same notebook through the end of the year 2019. I wanted to process and keep track of all the marvellous and terrible things that were occurring. I was living three days inside every spin of the earth, morning noon and night, each spread out like the vast expanse of… something. I didn’t start keeping a journal because I thought it would do anything, I started writing it all down because I didn’t want to forget. It was a glorious and exciting, and heavy time, it was a lot and I didn’t want to forget it. Now the most I remember is the nights I sat, with only a glow of light, and poured my thoughts and memories into the pages of that notebook. I remember the people too of course, and the love and wonder, but I remember that patch work covered notebook best. 

I had a migraine yesterday.

It’s been years now, less than it feels, but I still keep a journal and start a new one for each turn about the sun. I’m not sure it does much other that of being the keeper of my secrets and deep dark feelings. And the feelings are only dark because they’re deep and holes lack the light of the sun. 

And migraines, pain and suffering, they bring out the best and worst of me. The best of my emotion soaked words, and the worst of my pessimistic soiled sentences. 

This years notebook is a soft sky blue leather, says sky is the limit in gold lettering on the front. Felt right when I picked it in December, feels strange now in April when all I’ve done it wait. Wait for the silence of February, wait for the return of March, wait for the adventure of June. I’ve waited and waited and waited so much that the day the doors open I think I’ll hesitate. I’ll see the great Yet come knock on my door and hold my breath hoping it’s not here to tell me its time, I’m not ready. Haven’t even packed a bag. 

This morning was weird, like walking out of a hazed dazed sort of fog and terror. I think I dreamed, dreamed hard enough to be confused with the weight of reality. 

I pick my journals based on the feel of them, if they bend just right, if the cover suits how I think the year will be, what the year will bring. I suppose I thought adventure, but I now think adventure comes in all shapes and sizes, and perhaps I wasn’t quite ready to leave. There was more I need to do, more to see, hear and feel. There was more I need to let go of and more to hold onto. 

I can’t see properly when the headaches get that bad, my face looked like it would melt right off my skull. The whole world stops looking real and now I can’t remember if any of it was real yesterday. Feels like a bad dream. 

My notebook for this year has many entries but few full pages. When I go to journal my thoughts get chopped off at the knees and I run out of things to write down. I am sort of haunted by the thought that one day when I’m gone, or my eyes stop working, my children will read the words I immortalized in those pages. It stays my hand more than I wish it would. Some days I wish to leave a great mark upon the earth to scream that I was here and I was loved and I was and I was. Most days I dream of vanishing without a trace, and only the absence of me being the ghost that lingers. 

Only the missing ends of my hair from where it was cut registers as a clear memory 

When I stared journaling I didn’t know the path it would set me down. I wasn’t a good writer in school, ask any of my teachers it was painful. But journaling has a certain freedom to it, where there isn’t a right or wrong, just a truth or lie. 

I need a nap.