The blue notebook

From the ages of 15 to 19 I had a journal that has become my favorite out of  the many journals that I've kept throughout my life. It's blue with yellow pages, held together with a black strap. The cover is worn and scribbled on. Unlike the others, I kept it as an open journal. I didn't consider it's contents private. I was not the only one who'd written in, doodled in, quoted in, and dreamed in it's yellow pages; but so had almost all of my friends. It's like a time capsule, bursting at the seams with teenage angst and nostalgia.

This book holds some of the most sincere writing that I have ever been able to conjure up. The journals before this one, and after do not show the same free-flow writing, or un-edited, raw poetry. This is what I think makes it beautiful, and more interesting than any of the others.

For the past two years I thought I had lost it. Then recently, I was sent a box of books that had traveled across the country with me to Seattle a few years ago during one of my destruction for the sake of recreation phases. In one of the boxes was my special blue notebook. I had been looking for it and was fearful that it was permanently lost, so when I found it in the box I was more than elated.

While sharing some of the entries with Monika, we got to talking about how there are times when art comes more easily. It only happens when your inner critic is quieted by the flow. The flow can only be turned on in one of two ways: uninterrupted hard work and passion, OR the overflow of emotion that pushes the art out of you seemingly without any force or conscious thought. Being young, super emotional and uninhibited was the drive behind all of the entries in the book, and it shows.

Sometime around the age of 19 I lost track of it. In one of the last entries I wrote about meeting James; the man of my dreams and moving in with him. I clearly remember tearing through my first apartment with him after realizing that I had misplaced it. I was awash in this strange feeling that I had somehow lost myself. I was happy and in love but creatively blocked and mentally bored. In a tear filled-rage like one of which James had never seen- I ripped the place apart. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BLUE NOTEBOOK????The apartment looked like a tornado had blown through it by the time I finally found it.

Back inside the familiar yellow pages I started to miss the comfort in being sad. I searched for a way to get back to that place of creativity. I needed chaos. I wanted it. Not knowing that this was simply a need for flow to return; I started down a spiral of self destruction that would become the pattern of my life for the next 10 years. Without chaos there was nothing to put down on the page. Without writing I was not myself. Without a sense of self I had no purpose. What could have been a productive time in my life became a stage for self created drama that was the opposite of conducive to my being. How could I have been so blind to this?

I know that writers often force themselves into experiences that they would not otherwise be inclined to get into for the sake of  having material for their writing. Unfortunately the only time that I felt proud of my writing came from experiences in which confusion and drama reigned supreme. I guess I can't be too hard on myself for falling down that rabbit hole...since it's a common mistake, but still- it feels good to identify the source of something that has affected me for years with no resolution up until this point.

Carl Jung said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life, and you will call it fate".

I have a clear goal now to dig deeply into the well of passion, and climb back out of it on a rope-ladder built of hard work and determination instead of this never-ending loop of drama/insanity. I am feeling more and more like an adult every day, and with age comes wisdom. The past will no longer be the basis for how my future is shaped. New outlook. New vision. New me.