I Hate Journaling Novels & Stories

Everyone else she had ever loved had left her. After about ten minutes of self pity, she pulled out her journal. She had kept a journal her whole life, but since she started living alone, she found herself writing in it more often. Her writing was depressing – how she deserved to be alone, what a loser she was, how she had nothing left in life. At one point she had written that if it wasn’t for her cat, she’d jump off a bridge. Tonight she wrote about missing the two people she loved the most – her mom and Tony. She ended it with, ‘I’m such an idiot to think he could love me again. I don’t know how much longer I can live this life. I miss him and my mom so much.’

Not with the trembling in her tone when she said it. My chest tightened, and I reached for the only thing that had kept me sane these past weeks… my journal. The leather cover was worn soft, the edges fraying, the pages crowded with ink that felt like blood drained from me. I opened to a fresh page, the tip of the pen hovering over the page. I stopped writing halfway, staring at the list, and then added: I don’t know if I’m writing about Adam or myself anymore. And then, I just stared at the truth written in black and staring at me.

This was my first real hunger since Friday's hell and thank goodness I felt like putting something in my stomach. God, I wanted to spill to someone. Yell what was bothering me out and get help. But how do I do that? “Hey, my journal is gone and it’s full of my writings about my professors fucking me raw.” If I told someone that, they'd probably find a way to lock me up and call me crazy but my friends, James and George, might hear me out actually. James? He'd slap my back with his eyes wide telling me it is definitely ballsy as hell to write that kind of smut about my hot professors tag-teaming me. His grin would be wide and maybe he'd share his own crushes and fantasies.

It was my outlet to stay sane, and I used them to tear the ugliness out of my brain and lock them away to burden the books instead of me. These journals contain every horrid, dark and painful memory I never want to examine again. Almost like cutting open my skull and letting the pictures pour out across the floor for him to see in all their detailed glory. I was always a good descriptive writer; it was my therapy, and now sitting here, it’s the worst thing I ever did. I never intended for anyone to see them, let alone Alexi.

"I'm a mess' 'I blame myself' 'I hate myself' 'Will I ever get over it?' Every word was every thought penned down on a piece of paper and it was a raw escape into her grieving mind. 'Everyone says journalling will help but I won't lie, I feel like shit more and more every day. When will it get better? When will I stop feeling this way?' Tears welled in my eyes as I swiped through the pages. Even a drop soaked the edge of the book but I carried on. For more than half of the book, she wrote about Nathaniel. Her love, her loss, her grief. Everything. She wrote everything that she felt. A few lines belonged to my father, about how he'd saved her. Brought her to the Pack as his Luna after everyth

The second didn't disappoint as it began with “I hate it so much that I still miss you.” By the time I reached letter inscribed number seven, I had run out of headings. I just dove straight, pouring out my feelings without looking back, not afraid it might dry up. I never attempted mailing even a single one. Kira mischievously walked in on me writing the eleventh one. “Okay, why do you give me the impression that you’re not breaking up with a human but a ghost every time you sit right there and journal?” she asked, jumping on the couch like she hold a grudge against it.

I hated that I had ruined so many lives just by being selfish enough to write down my feelings. And I did not know how to stop hating myself.

Seven days of curling into myself, pretending I didn’t care, when every bone in my body ached from the weight of his absence. So tonight, instead of sleeping, I wrote. My journal has become my confessional, my graveyard, my punching bag. Ink spilling everything I can’t say out loud: the anxiety chewing at me, the anger curdling under my skin, the stupid, stubborn love that refuses to die no matter how badly he treats me. Maybe I wasn’t made to be loved. The thought scrawled itself in jagged lines across the page before I even realized my hand had written it. I shut the book quickly, blinking back the hot sting in my eyes. I swore I wouldn’t cry again.

It has the gleam of a device that has been cared for carefully over decades. I look at Alex. "Why would I want that?" He shrugs. "You should journal," he says. "You're a painter. You should document things. I hear listening back to yourself can get you inspired." I think about the diaries I've started and abandoned, about five of them, at different points in my life, each one petering out around page twelve when the obligation of it started to feel like too much work. But speaking is different. Speaking I can do.