Releasing the Past

For more than 30 years I have carried these with me. From house to house, and from Connecticut to South Carolina, I have moved with my old journals. I started my first journal in late 1981 and the last one is dated October '93. 

What do you do with things like this? I never went back to read them, and I am certainly not going to share them with anyone. For more than 30 years, I just moved them from house to house. 

For the past 7 years the journals have been in a plastic tub in my studio closet. Earlier this month I was cleaning and I decided that I had to finally do something with them. I put them in order and beginning with the first one, I started to read my old journals. 

About halfway through 1983, I stopped reading every entry and just started skimming the pages. Shortly thereafter, I stopped reading altogether. Instead of finding this experience enlightening, I was finding it all very distressing. 

These are not my notebooks filled with "Good Things", nor were these the notebooks I keep card and mementos in. No, these were journals from what was at times unhappy and lonely. I can easily, and fondly, recall the positive experiences from this period in my life, but what I was reading about was mostly the sadness I felt. 

I am so far removed from the unhappy person whose words filled these pages that I was finding it very difficult to relive this time of my life again. I made the decision that I was going to get rid of these journals. 

I got out my paper cutter, and going journal to journal, I cut the pages into strips. Once that was done, I put the strips in the tub and filled it with water.  A little extreme perhaps, but I didn't want to think about my journals and words laying in a landfill somewhere and possibly being found. I wanted to be certain, and have the peace of knowing, that they were completely unreadable.  

As soon I threw the water-soaked mess in the garbage, I felt lighter and unburdened. These journals were taking up physical and mental space in my life and I was now free of it all.  I would be lying if I said that since then I haven't had second thoughts about my decision, but ultimately, I feel I made the right decision. 

I have always been affected and influenced by the energy around me - good and bad - and making the decision to let go of these journals has been a positive and uplifting decision for me. It may not be right for everyone, but it is exactly what I needed to do.