Week 3: Enjoy When I'm Gone

   This weeks prompt is a good one. To burn the journal or not to, that is the question. In my eyes once you pass on and all the stress and anxiety from a person judging you is gone, you can be free. You no longer have to stick around trying to maintain a level of respect or compromise who you are to please others. Once your dead and gone you are freed from that aspect of life. Who cares what people think of you once your gone? Have at it for all I care. What I do want to be left behind is who I am through the eyes of the one who lived it. I want people to get the words from the horses mouth. When its my time to leave this earth, I want all my journals and diaries to be available to family and friends. 

  It took some brain storming to get to this concussion. People have some valid reasoning to keep their privacy or to let the people get a piece of them. As a person who is naturally curious about others and their lived experience, I think its only right to let people have the keys to my soul. What good is it for us all to keep secrets? How long can we hide in dark corners pretending to be something we aren't? What kind of people are we to shame our kids for getting into trouble when we won't even hold ourselves accountable for what we've done in the past? If at some point we don't share who we are, we'll keep on living a dishonest life, giving a false sense of reality for the people who come after us.

   I can understand how you don't want your kids to make the same bad mistakes you did or lead them down the wrong road but how can you teach someone something if they can't actually learn from your mistakes? I think pretending that something didn't happen or avoiding parts of your life instead of facing them head on is a short term fix to a long term problem. Some things we just have to heal from or it will weigh us down. In the article "Burning Your Diaries" it seemed like the weight of her having the diary in a secret place outweighed letting others have access to it at some point. Did burning it set her free like she thought it would? I don't think so. Just like she was curious to see others diaries, even snooping around without permission, I think she owes it to her loved ones to release those journals. 

  The people closest to us deserve to know the real self. There are currently topics in my life now that are too fresh to open up. It is pieces of ones life that can be hard to share but we must allow time for healing and find peace in what we've been through. Time is so magical to me because the further we get some a traumatic event in our lives, the easier it can be to heal. The event can go from it happening to you to it just happening and you seeing it as an outsider. You begin to think logically about things instead of emotionally. An experience that comes to mind with this is watching a loved one pass away. While it happens this pain runs deep. Its hard to comprehend losing someone who is so special to you, then time sits in. Time transforms that pain into memories you've had with someone. It turns that pain into glory and honor that you pay to the one you've lost. Let that time run its course and release you from that pain. Let that journal free. Give your loved ones something to remember you by. Provide peace and healing for your people.