Dear Diary, Where are you? Where am I?

I must have been 9 or 10 when I started recording my best friends full names, sloppily written in purple ink. After I read Harriet the Spy, I started spying on my neighbors with my brother. We hid behind bushes and trees. He held rocks to throw and I clutched my notebook to jot down their reactions. My journals give clues to who I am, but they do not explain me in my entirety, in fact, they miss a lot of the good stuff, the happy moments. There are holes. If you read my journals and if you read my blog, you do not know me. You know about the things I feel on a certain day. You may surmise after reading a collection of my blogs about me and that is okay. You learn about me from my blogs, just as I learn about myself when I take a peak at my old journals.

I usually scan my old journals when I'm bored and searching for a sense of worth or a sense of who I am. Today I was struggling, feeling a bit confused about who I am and what I've become. It's evident through my actions and my life in California that I'm not happy and I'm not good. In fact, I'm angry. I decided to dig deeper. I read my journals from when I spent a summer in Charleston. Reading them I found myself blushing, my stomach churning. A summer spent vying for the attention of boys? A summer spent wondering what boys wanted me? Let me make it clear, however, that I had the best time in Charleston; I laid in the sun all day and made friends who I had fun times with at local watering holes. But my mental well-being was obviously not at it's prime. And continued reading to old journals continues to paint a picture of depression and insecurity.

The most important journal that is missing is the one I kept while working with Americorps when I was at my happiest. When I wasn't tired from working 10 hour days I would sit at my computer and write about serving my community, building connections with my teammates, and the at-risk I worked with daily. I wondered if I was making a difference, if I was wasting my time, wondering what solutions would solve child abuse or poor education and fretting about the teammates I would leave in June. Real problems. Problems outside of myself.

My family moved and those journals from 2002-2003 were lost in the move. I swear they're up in an attic someplace, but I fear they're stuck on my old computer that was given to an ex-boyfriend through my brother, who claims that the ex is holed up in somewhere in Vermont.

So now what? Do I track down my high school boyfriend someplace in the woods? I think I'll pass. Do I sit on my bed and try to remember my emotions and frustrations and triumphs from that year? That's impossible. Do I reflect on that year and try to figure out the formula for happiness? It's a start.

I love writing in a journal. Is is immature for me to do it? Does it hold me back? I don't know. I think from reading past journals that the only thing holding me back is myself. I've taken one crucial step to mend some trauma from the past, but there is a lot more that I need to do. I'm just not sure what. My journals, missing or present, unfortunately do not have that answer.