Posted 1:40 p.m. Sunday, April 20, 2025
Dear Diary--Literacy Narrative
Her rose-red cheeks burned, and the agile wind bit at her cheeks. A tear slowly formed in her eye, as it fell down her cheek and began to freeze. Ash rained from the sky like snow. She stood in awe wondering where to go next. Her body wasn’t even doing the work anymore, and her mind was the only thing that was keeping her going. The gray sky quickly turned into a bleak, and murky sky. After what felt like days of running she, sat down in the unkempt grass and couldn’t keep her heavy eyelids from closing.
Conjuring up these thoughts, or stories full of emotion and feeling, dragging people in and surrounding them in a new place, submerging them in a new reality… my story, and outside, was just a figment of their imagination. Their heads would be swarmed with the thought of their place in my book. My poetry would carve words into their hearts, feeling woozy and soft. It would pick at their brains, awakening them out of their slumber, ringing in their ears the shouts of words on those pages, my pages. That was the kind of book or story that I found myself falling for. At twelve years old I wanted nothing more than to pursue a future in writing.
I believe these feelings of wanting to write came from a little blue sparkly book with animals on it. The cover was made of a plastic jelly material and there was a little pink lock on it. To 8-year-old me, the safest thing was that lock. I've realized that was a very janky lock I could've picked with a bobby pin or probably even just pulled apart if I tried hard enough. But that little book gave me a reason to write and it allowed all my thoughts to go somewhere. With all my misspelled words and sloppy handwriting, I sank my feelings into my little blue book. My journal… was me through words that I painted into pictures from my head to pages of my book. Whether it was about a dreamy boy in my 4th-grade classroom or building extensive forts in my basement with my cousin. I fell in love with my new friend. All I had to do was keep my pen moving and it soaked up all my thoughts, with no judgment, or criticism. Throughout my journal years, my first journal did not end up making it. I got rid of that first journal, but it didn't take long for me to get a new one…
Seven years later, I continue to scribble my thoughts into the safety of my writing. My little blue sparkly book turned into a grey “case” journal my father gave me from his work. My writing transformed from a way to put my daydreaming into words to a way for me to process my feelings. It allowed me to be a 20-year-old woman who allows herself to sit in her thoughts and understand the inner workings of her mind. Battling overwhelming feelings from school, work, or my love life has been documented on the inside pages of my journals. On the days when I couldn’t find the words to tell someone how I was feeling, or I couldn’t muster up the courage to speak my truth, I wrote it all down. I reread where my brain was months, years ago and I see such an immense broadening of who I have become. It pains me to read about the sadness that I have experienced but it fills me with such pride to know how I handled those situations, and how much contentment I have with myself. What pulled me into writing, was heartbreak.
I had the biggest crush on my co-worker when I was 16. The first minute I met him was on the stairs to get into the admin building on my first day, and I had no keys. He walked up and said, “You must be Desirae. No keys yet?”. On that drive home from work, I still had the butterflies that had been beating inside of me the entirety of my 8 hours shift. Screaming to my mother on the phone how I had just met my future husband. That entire summer I looked forward to every shift I was scheduled with, but he showed no interest in me. However, over the small amount of winter shifts that we ended up working, we started talking more. Interested in each other quickly, I soon started spending most nights after work at his family dinners. As much as I joked about him being my future husband when I met him I thought this would be another fling that happened in high school. However, this was not the case. Instead, I ended up spending my whole summer with him. He left for college while I still had a year of high school left. I spent lots of my time during my senior year of high school driving to Illinois to visit him at school. After homecomings and proms, his high school graduation and my high school graduation, road trips, and lots of holidays and celebrations, I left for basic military training. This began the beginning of our struggles. I went to Texas and felt so head over heels for this man, now truly believing that it would all end in a white wedding sort of way. During my 7 weeks at Lackland Air Force Base for boot camp, he wrote me every day, over 50 letters. But when I got to my technical school training at a different base in Texas, things started to go downhill very quickly. We both realized there had been a lot of change with us in those 7 weeks I had not been able to speak to him. The breakup that happened a few weeks after I had returned home would be one of many breakups over the next 2 and ½ years. What started as a crush I had when I was 16 ended up being my biggest heartbreak, not once but multiple. Now, as a 21-year-old woman, who still struggles with the most recent departure from just a few weeks ago, I know that through every one of these moments of loneliness and sadness, I can depend on my journals. I continuously found comfort in knowing that those pages would never judge me for what I wrote on them, and my thoughts were safe. My thoughts made sense, or sometimes they didn’t, but it didn’t matter because sometimes I just needed to see it read it feel what I was feeling, and comprehend it.
“1/21/24
Hello friend. Firstly you’re love. And beauty, and strong. And resilient. No matter what. Okay? I Love you. Don't give up on me. Please.
New Years. Passion. Loneliness. 2024. Yup. You left for North Carolina and something triggered him. Little petty fights. I just wanted to feel loved. I wanted him to give a little more. And… that was it. He went off on a tangent about how he will never be the man I need… and then, broke it off… so for 2 weeks I've been trying to hold this relationship together. Give him space. See him. Agree to no phone calls. Broke my celibacy. It all probably won't work. He is supposed to decide if he wants to see me on my next drill. In 2 weeks. If not, it's over. Permanently. Like for real. I wanna rip my insides out. But I'm also feeling so empty like I don’t even have it in me to rip my insides out. I think I’d rather lay on the flor and wait to rot away. Lord help me.”
This was the first journal entry after he left me the most recent time in 2024. I always for some reason go to my journal when we break up. As much as friends or family is great for support. There is nothing like just saying whatever and knowing it's safe. Your words are safe.
The whole process of writing can feel like meditating, while I breathe through my thoughts, sorting how certain experiences shaped me and what they taught about me, divulging who I am and how I learn from life and how to make tomorrow a better day. Being able to open your eyes to your work and be proud of yourself for what you put the effort in. I have not been able to get into the short stories or the poetry but since journaling, I do find myself writing a love letter to myself to be thankful for who I am. Or finding a poetic way to describe the stirrings inside me. However part of me will always miss falling into a spiral of a romance story made up in my head. I think I find myself falling out of love with reading poetry and love stories or dramas that would keep me itching for my book every free moment of my day. I think the consistency with journaling and looking back on the journals made me feel something. I need to make sure to sit down by myself and forfeit everything and become captive to my heart, allowing myself to find the moments where the words just fall off the page and climb right into my heart, and my brain falls into a hole where the world I'm spinning in does not exist, and it's just me the fantasy of my own words and my feelings. Maybe I need to explore my little world of dreams of writing again, and maybe I need to get myself another little blue sparkly book with a lock on it to write in. I’ll never stop loving the bliss of leaving the world behind me and embracing the words on the page, soaking myself in them and submerging myself in my thoughts. I learned who I am as a writer through journaling from when I was young. Even though I have had my downfalls in writing, forgetting how to feel and understand my reality, those moments have shaped me to realize that I need my writing but have not shaken me from those dreams I chase. I have come to learn to just write what comes to me.