WIKAJ... as an answer, not an entry

Why I keep a journal/the autobiography of a journal

I keep a journal because it is easy to transfer thoughts into print. It's hard to open yourself up but the relative anonymity affordable via the Internet makes it easy to let loose.

I was relatively safe in the world. In second grade, my mother and I were in a car accident that nearly killed both of us.

I went through the windshield of the family station wagon. My mother was nearly cut in two by a seatbelt in the days when the buckle laid on top of your stomach instead of to the side.

I remember waking up and knowing that I was in a hospital. I was 6 or 7, but I wasn't scared. I suppose I was too young or too doped to be scared. My mother was a nurse and my grandfather was a doctor. I just wasn't intimidated.

I was first published in elementary school, in the school bulletin. Poetry from a third-grader, however silly, is, I suppose, something to make note of.

I always had an affinity for letters and words. I grew up in a home that sagged from the weight of approximately 2,000 books.

At an early age, I knew the names of Mary Renault, Winston Churchill, Edward Crankshaw, Jubal Early, Jeffrey Shaara, R.F. Delderfield, Rudyard Kipling, and I knew the genres of each author.

I learned to read, in part, by ciphering the titles and names. I liked to see letters emerge from my pencil point and form words. I enjoyed running my fingers over sentences so that it looked like whole thoughts printed from my body.

I learned to read because my parents read to me. It seemed very natural to me. It made sense. I was rarely troubled by spelling. I did other things while other kids sat in a circle getting extra help in figuring out pronunciation.

Years passed. I wrote good papers and the teachers all liked me.

In middle school, blending with a mixed crowd of kids, life became harder by far. Old classmates sat silently, dealing with their own issues, while new kids teased and harrassed me. I was different. My face was scarred and my growing sense of internal difference was also a presence. Home was my refuge and my refuge was full of writings.

Finally, in my freshman year of high school, a place where I was becoming more comfortable and some of my old friends were back together, my father accepted a job here... here in the town where my grandfather arrived in a Model A Ford in 1924, here where my mother was born and raised, here where my parents met and fell in love. We transferred with great happiness. It was here that writing became something I could focus on.

I was new. Other kids were trying to figure me out. No one picked on me. That my grandfather was well-known and well-loved helped a lot. I can remember writing in high school and loving it. I joined the literary magazine staff and was named art editor because I could draw. The teachers encouraged us to write and write well.

I no longer had to deal with harrassment. I could focus on school. I made new friends. My lesbianism bubbled just below the surface but I kept it in check. I was too shy to ever even think of acting on it.

We kept journals for Creative Writing, Literature and Humanities. My teachers enjoyed my journals and used them as examples to the class once or twice. My Literature teacher even asked to keep my journal when the year was over.

In my senior year, we took on an exchange student from the Philippines. She was a smart girl with big black eyes. We used to lay together in the same bed and kiss each other on the neck. I traced the words "I love you" on her back and on her hands. Only some force of reason kept me from kissing her mouth and taking her clothes off.

The time for college came. I arrived in the evening and could barely settle down. The next morning I was up with the rooster and zipping around like I was on cocaine. There was an older student there, with a serious buzz and a hat made from newspaper. She teased me some and gave me a task to do to channel my energy. She actually put me out on the driveway to wave the new students to the Admissions office. That was Kim. She didn't say much to me, but she knew by my energy that I was gay.

For all this talk, you’d think I was really active, but truth is that I was painfully shy. They say that of me now, but they really don’t know what I was like before.

At college, I finally was among other gay students. I went through a boyfriend or two, but they ignored me when they didn’t get any real sex. Then Kim started talking to me and she and Cheryl took me under her wing. They lent me books. They shared their home. We hung out with Rhett, who was in my class, and her lover, Joan. If they hadn’t adopted me, there’s no telling where my life would have gone.

Somehow, Kim encouraged and inspired my writing. Yes, my crush on her was deep. It was painful to be on campus when they went home. I started a new book of poems. One day, I had left it open when I stepped out of the professors’ offices where I worked. When I returned, Ed (one of the professors) was bent over the book and smiling. That was a catalyst. Even though others had encouraged me, that moment sealed it. He told me that my writing was very good. After that, I felt open to sharing it more. That was my poetry, the most intimate thing I did.

Graduation time came. So did a woman named Cathy. In my fourth year, she distracted me from everything. I was trying to put together a slide show for a class and she was outside the window, sunning herself in the field. I never finished the slide show. I never finished the class. Even though I went through the ceremony with everyone else, I left without the sheepskin.

I got home after my internship and found my father in dire straits. I worked a few more times in New Hampshire and then Ohio, but I came home. I stayed eight years, until my mother died.

During this time, I wrote. Sometimes I journalled but mostly, I wrote letters. Long letters. Weekly. A 50-page missive to my friends was not uncommon. And when I couldn’t write to them, I wrote about them in my poetry. At the end of school, Kim and Cathy had gotten together. Kim and I didn’t speak for a long time. I’m talking five years. But everything that is true eventually comes back around to where it should be.

It was always Kim that I wanted to share my whole inner world with. To this day I doubt if there is anyone who knows me more than she does. She is a most uncommon Grace. She is very bright and very pretty and very strong. I never see her but she is always my friend, as is Rhett.

When there is nothing else right in the world, there is this outlet. Really pouring out your soul can be very hard. I found that pouring it out to nobody was empty, but pouring it out to someone made it worthwhile. And I found that just writing what you would say if you had the guts to say it is the way to write.

The beauty of an online journal is that you can be private and still tell everything… within reason. I try very hard not to be hurtful, but sometimes the truth, as you see it, is hurtful.

I have found the courage to say the things I never could before. And I need to be read when I write.

It is a gift to myself and, sometimes, a gift to others.

One of the things that I value most is that it has introduced me to a lot of interesting and kind people who form an odd community of (mostly) unsung writers.

Here in our journals, we can leave a little bit of ourselves and find our commonalities. We discover that though we may feel freakish, we are really all the same inside.

I keep a journal because it keeps me anchored in people in a world where I am often alone.