by Krystina Wales

Most of us have been anxious for 2020 to be over, to move on from such a hellish year filled with stress, strife and uncertainty, and expect to find more peace and harmony in the year to come. But most of us also know that the midnight clock switch from 2020 to 2021 isn’t going to completely erase what’s been building, what’s risen to the surface.

We learned a lot last year: challenge and growth will do that. And when shit gets hard, it’s nice to be reminded of what we’ve overcome, and which coping strategies for fear and uncertainty worked for us in the past.

For memoirists and creative nonfiction writers, remembering every emotion and incident throughout their life in such precious detail requires references to childhood journals. It’s those journals—and their ability to bring us back to those moments (however painful or mundane), to recapture and cultivate them, interpret them and study them and make them into reflection and inflection points—that make up a life well-lived and well-learned.

I, on the other hand, destroyed every journal I owned—chucked, burned, ripped them apart.

I always intended to keep a journal. I loved going to the store and picking out a notebook, one that fit my mood. I loved the feel of it, that book smell: wood mixed with vanilla. The blank pages were expectant with possibility. I could write whatever I wanted. It gave me such an enriching feeling to have that kind of power; to create, to put words together on a page and bring life to them.

I would start strong, putting anything down, capturing the day’s events as they were; my thoughts and musings coupled in among the mundane. But when the stress, trauma and uncertainty started to work its way in, I got scared.

Days or even moments after giving life to my sentiments, I considered them petty and childish. I despised the person I was on those pages, because the pages were no longer open with possibility, but laden with reality.

A lot of us questioned ourselves last year, aspiring to maintain the same pace and productivity levels we did before we were isolated in our homes, and cut off from community, friends, camaraderie and routine as we knew it.

We absolutely shouldn’t be, but a lot of us are disappointed in ourselves. We made mistakes at work, we fought with our partners, we yelled at our kids, we said no to Thanksgiving. And, God help us, we haven’t seen our friends in almost a year.

I can almost guarantee that no one wants to repeat last year. And isn’t that what journaling will do? Bring us back to this dumpster fire again and again—when all we want to do is forget it happened?

Journaling is a proven form of therapy. Just as sharing thoughts or feelings with a friend or professional therapist can be beneficial, journaling accomplishes a similar goal. When thoughts and feelings are swirling around in our heads—as many of them have lately— it can be difficult to sort them out, to process them effectively. Journaling helps us “brain dump” so we can sort through the emotions in front of us. Journaling can also relieve us from the pressure of our feelings—just through the process of getting them out.

Journaling can help us turn this dumpster fire into a renewable energy source to carry us through the next challenge.

It pains me now to think back on those discarded notebooks, those relics of the person I was; a person I so desperately wanted to run away from, but instead should have embraced. Because it is the actual events that would have been hard to revisit, and journals aren’t time machines. They are time capsules.

Many of us—to various extents—are embarrassed by who we were, what we didn’t know in the past, the choices we made when knowledge and life experience was limited. The not-knowing made us naive, but it also made us free. We made different decisions when we didn’t know the stakes, didn’t understand the implications, the potential fallout. I wish I had those memories to remind me of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve grown.

This is a hard season for everyone. But instead of shying away from it, maybe we should try to describe what the world is like—the feelings around it with such finite detail—that it lives on in pages we can return to and really remember who we were, and how it changed us.

These moments are hard and challenging and even painful. I thought looking back would make me feel the same way—but it doesn’t.

Looking back is a gift we can only give ourselves now.

Krystina spends her days in donor engagement and communication for a healthcare organization in Baltimore, which she considers the best job in fundraising, and she is also deeply committed to volunteering in Baltimore City. But her favorite roles are wife and mom. When she is not adventuring with her two daughters, she is in perpetual search of a really good cup (read: pot) of coffee or mastering her life goal of crafting the perfect charcuterie board.