There have been times in my life when writing has been a viable outlet for me. Every so often, I write a column that truly encapsulates my feelings and doesn’t feel like an assignment, but rather a piece of my brain selected for its beauty and translated on paper. 

Those are the types of columns that are worthy of my journal, but unfortunately, they never seem to make it there. I love writing, but a lot of the time, it’s a painful process that makes me wonder what aspects of my personality are worth an audience today, but other times it’s an accurate reflection not only of my feelings but also the world beyond what people see. 

However, for some reason, writing for myself has never been my strong suit. When I was young, I would start a journal and be consistent with my writing for all of one week, then promptly forget that I was supposed to be filling it out every day.

About a month later, when I would stumble upon my old thoughts of my daily life, I would think that they were not interesting enough, clever enough, or poetic enough, so I would rip them out. The idea of starting with a fresh journal was easier for my young brain to comprehend.

Now, I would love nothing more than to have the random, poorly-spelled scramblings of young Allie. I ache to know what I was feeling on a random Tuesday after school or on what I am sure was a very eventful Friday evening. Those pages of my old Justice journal with a sparkly turquoise “A” on the cover are gone. They’ve slipped through my fingers just as the memories became buried within my thoughts.  

I found myself ripping pages out faster than I could fill them, and by the time I finally wrote something I deemed worthy, there might as well have been one page left in the journal. It hurts reminiscing about how critical of myself I was even back then.

But in reality, I am not surprised as that process is very similar to my current habit of writing three or four paragraphs, then deleting them because sometimes I still don’t feel interesting enough, clever enough, or poetic enough to justify publishing it or even writing about it in my current journal.

If only I could see all the rough drafts, re-writes, unfinished pages, and documents once more. Then maybe, I would be able to watch my feelings develop and have evidence of my growth dating back further than just freshman year. 

That’s not possible. So instead, I will attempt to make up for the years of lost writing and incomplete thoughts by having many current stories to look back on by the time I graduate.

Some of the stories may have felt like an assignment, and some might truly encapsulate my feelings, but at least I can be proud of the fact that my stories, my thoughts, and the inner scramblings of a sixteen-year-old Allie are there, and not torn out of an old notebook because they were deemed unworthy by my warped standards.