only when you pry this pen from my cold, dead hand......

i received my first journal as a graduation present.  graduation from high school.  remember pens and paper? (i'm only slightly older than stone tablets and the invention of the wheel).  there's something incredibly therapeutic about going back in time in these journals (there's 7 of them, plus about 10 legal pads and COUNTLESS loose leaf papers).  i look back and most notably, i see that my handwriting has changed drastically.  it's grown up.  

ahhhhh.... to be 17 and have the world encrypted in pink pen,  the i's dotted with hearts and smiles as punctuation.  the original emoticons. the universe was my oyster....shiny, promising, a blank slate.  the majority of the entries that were of "earthshaking proportions" then (this boy said that, this boy doesn't know i exist, do i buy tapes or CD's, why are Girbaud jeans SOOO expensive, mom and dad think they know everything) are completely absurd to look at now.  so naive.  so simple.  so..so...pure.  so unscathed.

i left for college that fall.  by left, i mean i moved from my parents house into the dorms at WMU downtown.  a whole 4 miles.  my journals went.  college was awful....  i hated 99% of it..... why i left is another blog entirely.  my writing in this time is scratchy, angry, unidentifiable.  in 6 months, my pink hearts went to black rainclouds.... seriously.  my i's are dotted with rainclouds.  i was angry, hurt, empty, alone.  my life was changing.

i got married shortly after  i left WMU.  that, my dear friends, is a blog that will never be written.  it is a blog that is in my heart, mind and past that i keep to myself.  if we are close, you know all you need to know.  but a little snippet from then to (put things in perspective, i have about 3 full journals from after high school till the time i was married.) there is NO journal writing in the 3 years i was married.   

after the divorce, the journals reappeared....as if with vengeance.  i wrote constantly, feverishly, honestly, and heartbreaking.  words poured from my heart, tears from my eyes. so many of these pages are blotted with tears...making the ink bleed.  (you should probably know that i'm kind of a pen snob.  ok.  i'm a really big pen snob...i'm also a wine snob, a shoe brat, and a purse whore). the things i wrote for these years are in a strong, confident, precise script.   in this time, i kissed my far share of frogs and still wrote about stuff that was ironically the same as before (what did he MEAN by that, why doesn't he understand blahblahblah, why are cars SOOO expensive, why are mom and dad ALWAYS right) 

i quit journaling sometime after one of the frogs thought he had the right to read what i had written.  he breached my trust and took the liberty of picking my brain and my thoughts, my fears, my hopes, my dreams, my complete rawness.... by reading them.  as we all know, trust is something you work a lifetime to achieve, but takes a split second to destroy. i may forgive, but i never forget why i forgave. unfortunately, he ruined it for the whole class.   never ever again would i write down in my little books my heart.  it's not that i don't trust them around now, but i will never be put in that position again.    

i am so grateful for this blog. i may not be funny all the time.  i may not be PC, or fair, or strong, or right. and i may start sentences with prepositions. but (see?  i did it again)  it's MINE.  it's my thoughts, it's my heart.  it's real, and open, and honest and scary and wonderful and full of horrible grammar and terrible run-on sentences and lack of punctuation.  i'm past the hearts and smiles, past the rainclouds....

i'm stronger.  i'm confident. i know where i stand, what my strengths and weaknesses are . i know what i offer, what i need to improve and my standing on many issues.  looking through these last few blogs, i've noticed that the basic things i thought were the BIG deals, the things i thought were NAIVE, are exactly the things in life that will always be there, i just didn't know i knew it......  the males won't understand the females, everything is ridiculously expensive, and mom and dad have always been one step above brilliant.  


i've also learned one more important thing.  you can take a lot of things from me... a piece of my heart, a tear in my trust, and falter my steadiness for a minute....... but you will NEVER take my pink pen from me.