By Tara C. Pray
I stood there feeling angry.
My anger was no longer about the thing, just minutes ago we had been arguing about. Instead, my anger was now stemming from the realization that my privacy had been violated.
Someone I knew and trusted. Someone I called my “significant other” stood in front of me, spewing words that sounded similar to ones I had written in my journal years earlier. I did not need to question how he knew about what he was saying to me.
I did not need to ask because I knew.
I knew my journal at some unknown point in time had been confiscated and misread. And in that moment words that were private, words that had nothing to do with him or anyone he knew, words that belonged to only me, were now being used against me. They had become weapons to shame and devalue me. He spoke as if there was something wrong with me because of the thoughts and feelings I had put in my journal.
My journal was always kept in a place where forbidden eyes had no access. The ability to obtain the pages of my heart had to be the result of a fierce determination to know what I had been privately writing for many years. I never knew how much was read; how many pages his eyes consumed. I never knew because it did not matter. The damage was done. The way in which I approached writing would never be the same.
My journals, the “safe place” where I could be open, honest and raw about me and my life was no more.
For many years after that experience, my journal writing suffered. The ability for raw honesty to be written was no longer available to me. Because I could no longer access that part of me, my vulnerable and authentic self was nowhere to be found in my journals. Instead, I censored my writing. My truth never able to rise in the same way that it once did. I carried with me every time I wrote, the fear question, “What if someone finds my journal?” This was the question that had begun to shape my experience as a journal writer.
It has taken me some years to find my true voice again in my journals. It is a process that is ongoing and always evolving. I recognized, though, that I needed to take back the power that had been stolen from me in that one moment so many years ago. My journal needed to become my safe place again as life began to have its way with me. The experiences of loss, grief, love, spiritual growth and heartbreak needed a place to exist. I needed to work through and work out the changes that were rapidly happening all around me and within me. I needed to be able to put pen to paper and to make sense of what wasn’t making sense in my head.
I needed to go back to the page and so I did.
And by doing so, I have a voice that is no longer silent. I am becoming comfortable again with being vulnerable and authentic. My writing no longer is determined by fear, but instead by my truth and my strong desire to be able to fully express myself.
ABOUT
Tara C. Pray writes at http://www.wordsbytara.com about faith, spirituality, journal writing and dream making. She is the author of the e-workbook, Journaling to Your Purpose.
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