Pages and Pages

Sitting in bed looking at a fairly new journal and wondering how many more pages I’ll tear out before I decide I’m content with what I’ve written. Tattered spines and pages dangling is the inevitable fate of every blank book I touch. The words seem to flow quickly but sound like utter garbage if I happen onto them again.

Sometimes, I forget why I write. I started journaling a very long time ago and I’m assuming it was because I was lonely. As a young child I became so tired of constantly being told that the way I thought was wrong and so I turned to pens and blank pages to share my thoughts with instead.

These days I don’t too much care if I sound wrong on paper; if I am wrong. I cannot go for very long without jotting down a line or two. Lines that will be torn out in a week, a month maybe.

I worry a lot that my words sound crazy, that anyone who might read them won’t understand. But not here where I write on my blog. There’s much I don’t share even here though. Things that keep me awake at night. Things that tear my eyes away from a novel I’m reading while sitting in my car on lunch break. In these moments I am compelled to pull out one of my many blank books and jot it down. It doesn’t really mean much, it will all be destroyed in a week or so anyhow.

I’ve lived in this habit for so long that now I have a fear of desecrating that first blank page of my notebooks. Trashing it with words that I will later decide weren’t anywhere near acceptable enough to grace the blank lines. My journals are precious to me and my words never seem worthy enough.

And maybe I’m not meant to write, maybe I’m only meant to ache to write. I hang onto every word written by authors in the books and blogs that I frequent and tell myself that maybe that’s just not for me. I won’t deny that it makes my heart stop to think that writing isn’t what I’m supposed to do. But really, what else can I do other than continue to write on and then rip out those pages?