This daily archiving series is about organizing and dating my journal collection, as well as acknowledging the self-directed violence as important therapeutic shadow work. Processing my projections and darkness. There is much joy in the pages. There is also a lot of pain.
The process is getting to me. I feel strange, dumb, self-obsessed as I thumb through pages. I pull out a random journal and in disgust shove it back in the shelf as I don’t want to address its contents right now.
There is something keeping me going though. Processing the journals through these trivial posts helps me gain perspective. After all, this blog is my journal as well. Posting gives me the overview and structure that I need; it is my personal therapy. It keeps me in writing process, making other projects flow easier. I also think the process of revisiting –and then wrapping up the journal after posting sample pages and then archiving it – means I am done that chapter at last. Maybe that journal won’t be opened again in my lifetime.
And today’s journal is difficult. It starts about 6 months after my (then) life partner divulged a year-plus long relationship with another woman.
And in this journal, I see myself spending too much energy doing CPR on a dead marriage.
This post-it though (that I found inside) is pretty cool, as I am actually that future self now.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date November 6, 1989
Cover
Sample Pages
Sample Writing
September 22, 2001
Email from J_____ :
“I am yours. Fully, I am coming home forever with a heart fully in love with you – no doubts…”
October 22, 2001
Email from J_____ :
“I want again to say sorry for making this weekend a difficult one. I do not want to ever entertain the thought of leaving you again…”
October 26, 2001
My body remembers and awakens. Old aches and pains will surface and intensify while they are being dealt with and discarded. A new biography.
November 1, 2001
When we have compassion, pain dissolves into love.
November 19, 2001
I don’t know about J____ but I am so acutely aware of all we’ve been through… and I feel so much bigger as a result. Sometimes shaky, but steeped in love. I can say I am in love with him. Deeply in love with new feelings and gorgeous old familiar love.
November 21, 2001
Go back to this bitter event in my past and keep it alive for me, and then bring me the harvest from it.
November 22, 2001
Do I need reassurance or do I just need to let go(d)?
December 2, 2001
Don’t try so hard. I can’t give my heart or trust my life to J_____. That is realization and acceptance. My heart is my own. My life is my own. He had another life/love unbeknownst to me. Which made me less. To not know. And I have no idea how that other life exists now. But I can trust that I am not less anymore.
December 10, 2001
I am so glad our family is together at Christmas. And I wish for peace, balance, love and glowing growing open hearts…
December 17, 2001
Email from J_____ :
“It is you I wish to be with. Thank you for letting me stay with you.”
December 22, 2001
[I recall getting up in the middle of the night with a panic attack to write this note in my journal.]
December 26, 2001
“My trust”
Just two words written on a little card.
I am glad I tried to give this little card to J_____ for Xmas. But it was too hard and I couldn’t. And it opened us to more truths as a result. If our marriage ends here, I accept, I understand, I am ready. If our marriage endures, I accept, I understand, I am ready.
J______ if you are reading this, am I dead?
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“Finishing business is opening unconditionally into love.” – Stephen Levine
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