Journaling

I was cleaning out a closet the other day and had made decent progress before I came across a journal from 2008. At the time, I was divorced and applying to a doctorate program, finishing my grad school and moving in with my parents to save money. I was dating a guy I'd met in a karaoke bar and working through some stuff with friendships. I'd just completed the first draft of my book. And, apparently, journaling a lot.

I spent at least an hour reading it. And only stopped because Sullivan woke up from his nap. It sucked me back into those relationships, that finite period of time. It felt like another person. I could remember all those things for the most part, but current Kelli is so distant from 2008 Kelli.

This has happened to me before. I've kept active journals since I was 17 or so. Lugging them to college, to Florence, to San Diego, through moving, and to Maine. Boxes of these decorative books with varying handwriting, pages of observations and feelings. I even took a journaling class once. Prompts and activities written privately amongst a group of fellow journalers.

I remember taking a co-worker to Barnes and Noble (a great selection of blank books) over a lunch break when I need to get a new one - the one I just re-discovered, in fact. She asked how to journal, what to write in there and how often to do it. I explained how I write for my future self. And maybe my future children, should there be any. At the time, I thought it was so sad that she had to ask me that. That she didn't know about the secret pleasures of a journal.

I didn't journal through my first marriage. Before we married, he read my journal, becoming enraged over something I'd written. A thought about another guy friend, innocent and innocuous. He said he wanted to be able to trust me, but seeing the other person's name written was too hard for him. I told him I had nothing to hide and would have showed him the journal if he'd asked. But instead, he'd waited until I went to work - washing buckets in a flower shop - before taking the book from my drawer. I felt betrayed, but agreed not to keep anything from him. So I stopped keeping a journal.

My fiction writing became a place where I could make things up while hiding truth inside it. A character I wasn't allowed to be in real life. And after the marriage ended, I felt another break-up with the character I'd created. This woman who seemed so directionless and flighty didn't match the overflow of feelings I was having. She wasn't serious enough because I'd invented her to be light.

I abandoned editing her to edit myself, returning to my journaling with a vengeance.  The 2008 journal was just one from that year, one book only able to contain a few months of feelings and ache. I was recording life to the details thinking every thing seemed so crucial.

And when I read it now, or any of them, they feel so painful. It is hard to see the purpose. Why write down these feelings of being lost? Of being alone. Of being so angry with another person. Did it make me feel better at the time? To record it so I could relive it later? Maybe I was so afraid of losing myself again that these journals were bread crumbs to guide myself back.

I don't journal now. Not the same kind I used to do. A friend sent me an "Every Day" journal that chronicled five years of your life. Each day, you jot down a few lines, which go underneath the few lines from that day in the year before. And at night when I do this, I try to think, "What do I want to remember about this day?" That Henry helped pick tomatoes with me. That I rode my bike to work. That Jared slept in the boys room so I could fight off a cold. That Sullivan learned the word "Stegosaurus." And if I find this journal years from now, it will be like a stop action movie of silliness and sleep-depravity and date-nights and bicycle rides and growing up.

Bad Guys

Sullivan's current favorite game is "Bad Wolf." This is where he identifies someone to be the Bad Wolf and it's that person's job to stomp menacingly and say, "Little pig, little pig let me in." His response is to squeal or growl back, clarifying that his growl is from a T-Rex, not a wolf. He often switches who is Bad Wolf mid-game. Or sometimes cries and acts scared, even though he's the one who started it.

He'll also, within the first ten seconds of the character being on screen, point out bad guys on TV. Whether he's seen the show or not, whether the character is meant to be a villain or not, he just knows they are up to no good.

Henry was telling me about a Star Wars character the other day, all his attacks and plan thwarting.
"Why is he being so mean?" I asked.
"He's the bad guy," was the simple answer.

This black and white division really bothers me. The way they so easily separate good and bad. I get that kids (and teens and adults) have to box things up for themselves. It makes it easier in a way. But it doesn't require much thought. And I wanted to have a conversation, at least with Henry, about it all. Since we were in the car and still twenty minutes from home, I decided to go for it.

"You know what I don't love about movies and TV and some books?" I asked him. "That there are bad guys and good guys and they are never the same people. "

I asked if he'd ever done something "bad," something he knew was mean or wrong. He acknowledged he had. "Are you a bad guy?"

"No." he answered right away. "But this guy is always mean to the Jedi," he countered. "He's nice to the storm troopers though."

"I bet if you asked the storm troopers they wouldn't think he was the bad guy," I added, not really knowing much at all about Star Wars, but trying it anyway with Jared shaking his head at my Star Wars ignorance next to me. "We don't really know him, right? Only what you see in movies or the show?" Henry nodded in the rearview mirror. "Okay, what if you were hanging out with Sullivan or your friends being the kind kid that you are and someone came around and did something mean? And maybe you did something mean back. What if someone else only saw the mean thing you did and nothing else. They might think you are mean."

"But I'm not mean. I would tell them that."

"I know you're not, but we all do some not nice things sometimes. And for the people who don't know us, that could be all they know about us." Then, to show how compassionate I was feeling, I brought up Paul LePage. I explained who he is and that I don't know if I've agreed with anything he's ever said. That he is often mean, wastes a lot of time and plays games about really serious stuff. But, the guy had a rough childhood. I give a few examples of this.

"What about toys?" Henry asked. "Did he get any on his birthdays?"

I explain how lots of families can't afford toys and how LePage didn't really even live with his family so there weren't a lot (or any) people who showed love like giving birthday presents.

"I can't imagine how I would feel if I didn't have people who love me around me all the time. And I had to worry about food and where I would sleep. I bet that would make me really sad and scared and angry."

"Me, too." Henry practically whispers this.

"That doesn't make what he does okay. But maybe I can try to understand a little better why he's so mad all the time."

And, just so I wouldn't start feeling too proud of myself for having hard conversations with my 5-yr-old, he responded "Are we almost home?"