THOUGHT DAUGHTER

I started writing a bit younger than 16. Between family members, therapists, and teachers recommending the written word for me to express myself, I must have begun as early as elementary school. Fortunately, these writings no longer exist and I am saved from having to reflect on “dear diary…” and the list of reasons why I shouldn’t have been grounded to my room by my grandparents.

At the end of each volume, I take out the stack of journals from under my bed, I sit on the floor, and feel the ink-raised pages on my fingertips. I time travel back to the moment that I sat with a ballpoint pen and feel everything that she felt so long ago. I look at the drawings of neurons and black holes and try to read the illegible marks from her roughest days. The slanted and sometimes furious writing of a girl just trying to understand forever embedded in between the lines of pages that hold everything from laughter and joy to anger and regret.

Over the years, my writing has taken on different forms. Some days it is interrogative. I question everything from the meaning of holding friendships to how long it would take to travel to the most distant star in our galaxy. Some days, it is reflective–I gauge how far I’ve come by how much farther I have left and the path I should take to get there. Other days, the pages are tainted with bitterness that creeps in from either too much to drink the night before or the seeming unfairness of the cards I was dealt. I see the progression of a girl trying to form fully fledged thoughts to a woman who sticky notes the pages when she has one unique enough to think about further. I also see the regress of someone who sometimes doesn’t know the answer, but still thinks that a step backward is sometimes still a step in the right direction–regress is progress after all.

So, while I sat finishing my eighth volume, I tried to identify the common gravity that allowed and still allows me to float between thoughts and make them tangible enough to land somewhere for a while and write on it–flying from planet to planet just trying to make heads or tails of it all.

It’s safe to say that, though I am young, I’ve never held onto a hobby as long as I’ve held onto writing. For nearly a decade, I’ve kept journals handy in my tote bag for whatever adventure I would get into that day. Sometimes, I am more conscious about bringing my journal than I am about bringing a book. That’s surely not something I’d expect from myself. So, why do I write?

This question would get a different answer depending on the volume you ask, but the common ground is that I’ve been curious all my life and my journals merely reflect that. Of course, the human in me sometimes likes to write about trivial matters like the color of my boyfriend’s eyes in the sun, but largely, I am in the business of plain curiosity. After all, it is worth knowing why his eyes resemble the forest yet twinkle with mischief at the same time.

Volume 6&7 were written during my final years of college at which point I was helping out with a friend’s blog and podcast. Entries included reviews and talking points on The Prince and A Night of Serious Drinking as well as The Plague, The Glass Castle, and A Room of One’s Own. Less academic entries also included what San Diego tasted like on New Year’s 2022 while see-sawing on a teeter-totter across from the Gaslamp District after stuffing my face in Little Italy. The common thread here being that everything is worth exploring. From the mundane walk to the pool to the surrealist thoughts of French literature. I am in the business of exploration.

In a way, my journals are like spaceships. The gravity propelling my movement is curiosity and exploration while the spaceship (journal) acts as a capsule keeping me alive. Unlike our space exploits of today that break down after some time, my capsules have only gotten more reinforced over the years as I’ve gotten better an maneuvering the space between planets. Thermodynamics does not exist in this dimension–chaos and entropy are far away thoughts that I left behind when I propelled myself out of orbit. Volume 1 was clearly an act of trying to escape.

To an outsider, my spaceship looks like it’s on a quest for human achievement. Moving from star to planet to star again for the sake of advancing some technological or scientific endeavor. As this is a much more heroic feat than what is actually the case, I will continue to uphold this facade.

The reality is this exploration is that of an idealist. A dreamer who has her head in the clouds and has never once settled on just one thing. Why do that when there’s a universe to explore? Armed with foolish optimism and curiosity, I hurl through space because not knowing is my own personal hell. My journals are my field guides that report my findings for the day because everything is worth knowing.

And while there are points in my life, even still, that I wish it were different, I’ve learned to take pride in my quest because there’s no good in loving something in secret. I’m learning to accept the ridicule and roll with the tide as it comes in.

As always, read on. Go learn something new today.