I really AM still me.

Yesterday, I spent a long time reading old journals. I picked up the "real" ones first.
They were the ones I tried to keep really positive. They were the ones that I was okay with other people reading. Sharing "spiritual" experiences and my testimony, but they weren't my real miracles or my real thoughts.

I spent about thirty minutes reading those, and then I just felt yucky.
I curled up in a ball and cried and felt really bleh.

I promised BJ I wouldn't read any more.
Last night, I broke the promise. I have a journal that was just a bunch of note paper. One day I started writing. I remember being so caught up in lies, that I just wanted a place I could be honest. There are no dates on this journal. No ending to the entries. I just wrote. I thought it was a lot of eating disorder stuff. That was there, but actually there was less of that than in my real journal.

What was there was Jen. Her thoughts. Her feelings. The things she felt about her family, God, church, life. Her guilt. Her sadness. Her anger. And she did a really good job of expressing herself. The journal that I thought was going to be really bad and hard to read wasn't. It was refreshing and felt good to me.

I am thinking about burning the others.
Report cards, daily schedules, presents, and the things I thought I was supposed to think make me a little sick to my stomach.

It turns out I was spunky and opinionated even back then. Everyone tried so hard to domesticate me and make me what they wanted, but it didn't work back then, and it probably never will. This is my favorite entry. I think I was about sixteen or seventeen, but I'm not sure.

"Who knows? Maybe someday I will look back on all this and laugh, but right now I really don't think it will happen.

Why do people say that anyway?

I don't see how stuff that isn't funny now could become hilarious enough for me to laugh about it in fifteen years. Oh well..."

Its been about fifteen years since I wrote it. And the things that made me sad back then, STILL make me sad today. The things that made me angry back then, make me even more angry now.

So, why DO people say that?