A Glimpse Of SuperMommy's Journalling (NaBloPoMo)

Truth be told, I don't treat this blog like creative writing.

Which is odd, because I've always treated my journaling like creative writing.  Which is to say, like a sacrament.  Like an art form.  My paper journals are stunning.

I don't necessarily mean stunning in that they're pretty.  I can't claim that- my handwriting is utterly atrocious.  I mean stunning as in looking at or through them can actually sort of stun you.  It's jarring.  Occasionally beautiful.  Sometimes chaotic.  Some journals can't close for all the stuff taped in.  Some had to be rebuilt as I wrote them.  Some have completely fallen apart.

I tend to rotate my paper surfaces.  To experiment with colors and media even in such simple things as describing a weird guy on the bus.  Writing and sketches and pasted in random stuff all mix together without much of a sense of reason.

And then there's the code.

I made up a secret code in which I write, sometimes.  Developed, modified, and pretty much perfected over seven years- even once transcribed into a separate written language.  It's even got its own integrated forms of punctuation.  It has a 40 character alphabet.  When I'm somewhere public and I don't want anyone to know what I'm saying.  Or when I don't want anyone leafing through my journal (not that anyone does) to know what it says.  So whole stretches are utterly incomprehensible.

I don't treat this blog that way.  I treat it like an organized space, almost like a public space.  Because it is very much a public space, and my paper journals never were.

Is this a creative outlet?  I think so.  but my emotional connection to it is completely different.

My children have seen me write here more times than I can possibly count.

They have almost never seen me write in my paper journals.  My paper journals are truly private, even from them.

I like the idea that someday, they'll discover that I have all of them.  Yes, ALL of them.  That they have a personal history of their mother, straight from her own mind, stored in shelves, every book dated.  And they will discover the rich emotional and intellectual life I have always lived privately, and they will marvel at the depth of the character of their marvel.

Depth in that they will discover that I am not actually so easily described as, "Mom."  Depth in that I had a youth filled with emotional angst, that I went through my battles with depression, with self loathing, with hormonal rages.  That I suffered the unfathomable optimism of youth, and that I grew, slowly, from a child with illegible scrawl to an adult with equally illegible scrawl, and that the entire journey is there.  From 1993 (the year I turned 9) until the present.  On stunning page after stunning page.

Complete with set lists and ticket stubs, candy wrappers and love letters, wrist bands and locks of hair.  Poetry, words of the week, phone numbers, the mundane details of my days...

All about the mysteries and inanities of my life.  In every humiliating detail.  Because those journals are for me.

And this blog is also for me, but it is not the same.  This is for me as a public entity- as a mother and a wife and a writer.

And this blog is for them, for my children who I adore and who will love reading the stories of their own childhood.

And this blog is for my readers, who enjoy my rants and my jokes and my stories and my effervescent style.

But my catalog of journals... those are for me.  And they are always written by hand.