A torn-up piece of paper, a mere scrap I deemed unworthy. In the trash, it went to join the graveyard of old journal entries, doodles, and to-do lists that didn’t make the cut. 

I am a writer. 

I tried tirelessly to fill a journal. I would scribble down my thoughts. I would force myself to conjure up something interesting to fill a page with the hopes of one day finishing what I started. 

I disciplined myself for a few months at a time, successfully documenting my life in my own legible, yet untamed, handwriting. However, just as easy as it was for me to convince myself journaling was a skill I had finally acquired, the habit got lost in the chaos of my brain.

The pages and pages I thought I was writing would only fill up a quarter of the book. And when my younger self would look back she would cringe reading the unfinished entries, and instead of appreciating them as the thoughts of a much younger version of herself, she would crave the feeling of a fresh journal once more. 

I would rip through and destroy the pages I dedicated my time to because I felt they weren’t good enough. They were too messy, with too many misplaced thoughts, and poorly executed spelling. I thought that if anyone were to ever read them that it would be the most horrendous reaction, so instead of risking myself, to the trash those entries went. 

I would love to see those pages, the ones I was so embarrassed by, I would love to discover the misspelled words, and the nonexistent grammar, but unfortunately my need for control has prevented me from ever reading those pages again. 

This upsetting fact has saddened me over the years, and although I have stopped destroying whole notebooks out of shame, I am still unsettled by the lack of documentation I have from my teenage years. That was until I remembered I am a writer. 

Writing in a journal might not be my specialty, but I am a writer nonetheless. 

Because unlike most seventeen-year-olds I have documentation of exactly what I was feeling almost every month of every year during my time in high school. Each entry is fine-tuned and online to avoid any errors or truly unbearable embarrassment for future me. 

And now, at the end of the day, when the pictures simply aren’t enough to jog my memory, and the retelling of stories starts to get a little blurry I can simply go back to this very website, and reminisce about the time when publishing these stories was all I knew.