I've have been journaling on and off pretty much since I was in primary school. When I say on and off, I really do mean on and off. I have had the same journal since 2013 to this day and there are still a lot of empty pages left. I have literally carried this journal with me halfway across the world and back. I must say, it is a great quality book considering I paid only around Nu.300 for it. I think I must have bought it during my class 11 winter break (which was 8 years ago) but it is still in great condition.
Yesterday, I read all the entries I have written over the past 8 years. It's amazing to see how much I have changed over the years, so much so that I don't even remember being or feeling that way. Sixteen year old Pema was quite determined to say the least. The first page of my journal was on January 1st of 2013. It was my final year in high school and I was determined to study hard. I wanted to be independent. There was no way I could trouble my parents with the financial burden of my college education. Of course, 8 years later, I fully appreciate the effort and determination as I am relishing the fruit of it today.
It's quite shocking as to how many times I mentioned God in that journal. I had such faith in God and the universe to make everything better. I had been a quite religious person until recently. I used to recite daily prayers and pray for everyone around me. However, as I graduated from college and became an adult, I began to analyze things more deeply. I realized that I have been blindly chanting prayers since I was a child yet have not understood the meaning of a single word. Everything will turn out to be okay in the end-that's what I thought before. But when is the end? How do we know what is okay and what is not? As you can tell, currently, I am lost but I am on a path to finding something to believe in.
Back in the day, as a teenager, I cared too much about the external stuff. I cared about my grades, about my friends and my family. It was a daily newsletter of who had a crush on whom and who scored higher than me in a particular subject. But gradually, as I grew up, I noticed the shift in my writing to becoming more internal. I wrote more about my feelings regarding a particular event, wondered why I am built this way. Even today, I am constantly thinking of the way I am. I could be triggered by a particular event or person, but at the end of the day, I am trying to figure myself out.
I usually write when there is something going on, whether its something special or tragic. In the beginning of 2013, I wrote about the first time I heard of the death of someone I knew. I didn't know her per se, just a girl from the class next door but it shook me up knowing that life was so unpredictable. Then I felt death the closest to me when my grandmother, my best friend, passed away. A few years later, someone I grew up with committed suicide, an aunt died of cancer, and so on. As I grew up, I have gradually become more and more apathetic as death has now become a normal part of life.
As I read through my journal, I realized that I have always had this sense of loneliness. I have always wanted to be understood and I have yearned for love no matter how much I tried to hide it. I finally managed to fall in love and eventually fell out of love as well. I realized that my yearning for love was not from someone else but from myself. I have felt the contentment in being alone with myself and I would not have it any other way.
I have been able to pour out my feelings in those pages and figure myself out through these words. Over the past 8 years, I have managed to document the most special moments of my life. The best part of having a journal is being able to go back and read and relive a part of my life again. I hope to continue doing so- maybe writing in this same book at least for the next two years, so that I will have a decade of my life saved in a single notebook. The best Nu. 300 I have ever spent!
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