On a crisp evening in October 2008, the first influential domino fell.
That night embers dimmed and glowed, bellowed with the gentle breeze. Sheets of paper-thin ash, words still visible, wavered before crumbling. Some floated off in huge flakes, disintegrating with my memories on the wind.
Something significant changed. Another chunk of my heart hardened and died, but it was the tipping point.
This time the domino hit another.
He’d been wanting me to get rid of my journals for as long as he’d known me. Too much was in there from my past that made him uncomfortable. He shouldn’t have eavesdropped on my private conversations with myself.
The past wasn’t a secret. But my reflections of it, recordings collected over years of tribulation and triumph, were private. Sacred.
Some of these memories were priceless. How much my children weighed at birth, how long the labor took, cursing over the nurse with long fingernails who kept checking dilation… that sort of thing.
A page lifted in the heat vector, rippled and crumbled. Another domino fell.
Many entries were not so benevolent. In my out loud conversations I am discerning, restrained, and usually soft-spoken.
My journaling language is not. No holds barred, damn the torpedos, full-steam ahead. Anger, hatred even, resentment, sorrow and humiliation allowed full expression. Supposedly safe between the covers of the book that gave them life. My shadow side.
The argument that pushed my buttons and led to the bonfire isn’t important. What is important is that I willingly sacrificed myself in an attempt to appease. What is important is that he didn’t want that part of me acknowledged, to exist.
Notebooks piled in boxes in the attic, tucked on shelves and one always close at hand, ready to receive whatever pressing thoughts I needed to release from my mind. I gathered them and brought them to the fire-side, two full boxes and an armful of defiant stragglers.
Tears blinded me and I refused to look at the words before putting them in the flames. About halfway through, I realized what I was doing. And then I tossed the rest on. More than 25 years of history. My history.
Dominos fell, tap, tap, tapping the next one in line.
My journals represented me. They recorded the parts of my life that were either too painful to hold onto or too fleeting to grasp. Sometimes the pages held ugly words and thoughts that never needed to see the light of day.
Always plagued with memory loss, long and short-term, I’ve relied on the written word to help me through. I read them during moments of self-introspection or to remember why I felt a certain way about certain things. To see if I’d grown or fallen into an undesired pattern.
The last domino fell. Reverberating aftershock imprinted on my soul a new pattern.
We can always walk a new pattern and transport ourselves to a different place to start anew. The past is both good and bad to cling to. If your grip is so desperate that the pages bruise, then yes, you need to let go.
But if the only reason it met the all-consuming fire was because someone else told you to. Fuck Them. (yes, I said it…)
I just got free of my own controlling force. He thought that my ideas and desires were nothing compared to his need to watch football and play video games. Even my health and sleep were sacrificed to his selfishness. I let it happen because I thought that’s what love is…
Until I realized the only sacrifice he’d made was to move into my mother’s house. The rest of the time he was a soul-sucking leech. Going so far as to make monetary demands of my family even though he didn’t even try to find a job.
Sorry… ranting. I hate to see others controlling people for their own gain. It sickens me to realize that after all of my preaching and soap boxing that I fell victim to the same thing I always warn women (and a few men) against.
My writer friend Jan, who’s at a Writer’s convention in Wyoming today, gave me permission to post this link to a diary/journal story of hers. It moved me to tears:
http://www.janmorrill.com/someofmywriting/fourlittlewords.html .
Thanks, Jan.
The only reason I burned them was to appease his insecurity.
Thanks for sharing your rant here. This is the last episode of DWL (Dirty Writerly Laundry), so it was a great time to do so.
I’m wondering if this took place years ago, and I’m guessing it did. Very powerful to throw away something you’ve held so dear, and yet I see that you not only did it for him, but you did it for you. To clean your slate perhaps, erase memories both good and bad. Perhaps to let go of the past so that you could see the present more clearly. At any rate, the flames have taken them, and you have been unchained. I see good things happening for you.
Hi Andrew. This happened in 2008. Funny thing is, I was very resentful about it until I put it into words and wrote this essay last night.
So in a strange way, for me, writing things down helps tremendously. And there’s no way I would have voluntarily burned my journals. I don’t think it helped at all to have done so, except that in so doing, it caused me to look seriously deeper into matters at hand.
But now I do feel better about it. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Sometimes, it takes a bonfire to clear the smoke out of our eyes.
I shared yesterday how I’d burned my journals from my teen years because my ex-husband violated my privacy. I felt defiled and vulnerable. So, I torched them. As the last journal’s embers faded, so did my love-for the prick. Any person with a sense of decency knows that you don’t read someone’s diary. It’s private. if he was capable of that betrayal what else could he do? Unfortunately, I was too stupid to get out before he could prove how horrible he could be.
I did get out and lived to journal again.
Be true to yourself. Fuck the rest of them!
Great story from Jan. Now I feel kind of guilty for reading Anne Frank’s diary and Go Ask Alice.
LOL. It was a great story. Yours was too. And so was RC and Kat’s! Thanks all of you for sharing your stories with me.
Vulnerable is an awful feeling, worse than defiled or betrayed, to me. Can’t believe so many others have burned their journals, too – it must be the most common response, the quickest way to get rid of them, I guess.
Here’s the link to Claire’s story: http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/writers-journals-how-important/#comment-1083
Sometimes it’s hard to know when love ended and self-neglect started.
Wow – finally was able to come back and read the end of your Domino Effect post, Madison, as well as your comments.
I love this: Sometimes it’s hard to know when love ended and self-neglect started. (Well-said!)
And Claire, your comment also made me realize how many other women have burned journals at some point in their lives. Maybe we should start a support group. “Hi, my name is Jan, and I burned my journals.”
One thing I will say, as tempted as I was to figure out my daughter, her moods, and the goings-on in her teenage life, I NEVER read her journals. And, I think she must still have dozens and dozens of them.
To this day, I still find it hard to be completely honest in any journal I keep – I’m always worried who might read it one day. That’s a shame, too.
Just thought of something. You might be interested in a weekend with Rosemary Daniell that’s coming up in August. I’ll send you the info.
That does look like something I’d be interested in, Jan – thanks!
After reading about so many of us who have burned our journals like this, I thought of the support group, too. Funny, or maybe not so funny, but it’s comforting just knowing others have felt similar pain.