THIS JOURNAL BELONGS TO MARY REITH

I have this unspoken rule with myself that I won’t re-read my journal entries until at least a year has gone by. I don't like the feeling of re-reading something that’s still fresh in my mind.

I also have this rule because the feelings I was going through at the time always seem to be brought to the surface. Like when your boyfriend does something and 5 months later you’re talking about it with your friends and you get mad all over again.

I have always been a sucker for memories. I have a box in my room labeled “letters and stuff”. I keep text messages. I take pictures of everything. I have four different cameras all for different things. I take videos, make videos, post videos. I have scrapbooks. And I rip out some of my favorite pages from my favorite books and display them on my bedroom walls. Memories! I want all of them. Journals have been part of my life since I was in elementary school. I was always writing about something, someone, how I was feeling that day, or how I was going to run away from home with my brother the next morning. Sometimes I find these old journals in the bookcases in my house or buried in the attic and think about how the little girl with curly pigtails sitting in my treehouse writing with a number two pencil would have no idea she would still be doing the exact same thing at 22.

I was actually writing a completely separate blog post and wanted to include a passage from my journal to prove a point. In the process of trying to find this specific passage I wrote (and failing, btw, cause I never found it) I came across some pretty cool entries and words. So I broke my first rule - I read through my journal that I started in September! Now, I'm about to break my second rule - not letting anyone read my journal.

I wanted this blog to be something different, a little bit more unique, and a lot more personal. Sometimes these ideas come to me beforehand and sometimes they come to me in 2 seconds and I need to follow through before convincing myself to stop. Ill be honest, reading my journal from last year was fucking terrible. It feels like in one year my prefrontal cortex has developed by 80%. Im reading entries from last year in utter disbelief, shocked, and SO EMBARRASSED. But I pulled through and kept reading - xoxo your welcome!

Nevertheless, I just wanted to share on this blog some of my favorite entries or one liners that I have written between 2021 and 2023. I have always loved writing, and I have always loved writing for myself, but sharing can be nice too. Even though there's not any context for any of these entries, I hope they can connect with any of you in some way.

FIRST JOURNAL (2022 - August 23rd 2022)

“If someone knows everything about you, then what do you have left with yourself?”

“BE GREAT MARY. LEAD BY EXAMPLE. THE WORLD IS YOURS.”

“I dont know why its so hard for me to just water my fucking plants.”

(This one is just so funny, I was clearly going through it my God - like its gonna be okay)

“And then I think about how one loss is just another gain. And that life is just a constant state of things happening and rain pouring all over just for flowers to grow large and tall.”

“But what clarifies a wrong decision? You can't tell if a decision was wrong or right until the future.”

“How does something end that never even started.”

“I still love myself on days that I can't get out of bed.”

“I think it's so funny how that world is. We constantly grow and gain a new perspective on different things and I wonder how my perspective will change from now in a few years. Sometimes it's just about seeing things more clearly.”

SECOND JOURNAL (September 21st - Present day)

“It feels like you will never live another day without thinking about it and start to think of life never changing and you'll never escape it. But one day you have better things to think about and it stops completely and only comes once in a blue moon on a random saturday and you sit in the shower and let the water fall on you and listen to songs close enough to fit and think and think and think and wonder what it all means even though you’ll never find an answer.”

“I want to look back and say these were some of the best days of my life. Because I believe you collect your best days like pennies. Every stage you are at you collect at least one best day of your life until you find a better one at a different stage. Your best days are best days for different reasons and I think that's so beautiful about life. Because you don't know you're living your best or worst day until after you lived it. I wish we knew. I wish we could look back and be told we are about to experience a “best day”. I guess the best thing we can do is guess and assume and be present in everyday life.”

“The need to move on. The knowing need to let go. I get so caught up in the moment that it's hard to think straight.”

“How do you become thankful for a time you had instead of being sad that it is over. It scares me to get old because of the memories of being young.”

“There's always going to be a match present even if it's not lit.”

“I don't know when or why I started feeling things so deeply but maybe that just comes with being older. I was never like that as a kid but we aren't always meant to be the same person we were as a kid and I think it's a gift from God to drown in emotion.”

“ I really am striving to be a better person and I'm finding it way harder than I anticipated.”

“People just will never see some of your friends in the way you see them and know them and I actually think that is kind of special.”

“There's always this slight, yet probable chance that your significant other is keeping you around for selfish reasons, but that's very much less likely that a friend is doing that. So I think the key when you're feeling down about yourself or feeling like nobody likes you or when you're sad or depressed is to think about / realize that someone is everyday actively choosing to have you around, and choosing to share life with you because of who you are. I think that's very cool.”

“Just one of those things that make me happy to be alive and human and reminds me that I leave and can leave even a small imprint on people.”

“And sometimes that's all you need, your familiar friends.”

“Quiet out the noise. The grass isn't greener on the other side. It is all an illusion.”

“But my God sometimes it was nice to not feel everything so intensely. As I get older my emotions just get so much more intense, but in different ways you know. Like I still get angry but not as much as my 15 year old self - instead I just get way more sad. I don't know which one I would rather take. My fathers rage or my mothers tears. Somehow I have both and they take turns.”

“Worry about nothing. Appreciate everything. Understand that everything is connected. Nothing's a coincidence. Go outside, listen to your favorite music and realize and reconnect with how special your life is. Remind yourself how much you love life. Tell yourself that everything is going to be okay. Tell yourself to chill out and take a deep breath. Remind yourself that it's not that serious. It's never that serious. Love yourself. Admit that you don't know everything. You don't even want to know everything. Life is good and life is better that way.”

“One day you are 17 and the next day you are driving the backroads of your college town 2 weeks before you graduate and you pass a house that reminds you of the one you used to party at in highschool with everyone and you wish you could go back to that time in your life but you can't. And you're 3 days away from turning 22 and the years are going by too fast and you would do anything to experience the feeling of being seventeen.”

“You know, you get so caught up in everything and so bored of the mundane and so depressed in the winter and then you're about to leave a place forever and all i want to do is go back to sitting in the living room after a long shower and its dark at 5pm and we’re all in blankers watching some movie or tv show laughing about something stupid.”

“That would make me so lucky. To have had something you miss so much that it hurts”

RANDOM ENTRIES (From here and there, some before 2021, some recent)

“But the body picks up where the mind ends, the body will always fight for your life. I cried for her and myself when she said that no matter how short you cut your hair or how thin you get, it is always going to be you underneath all of that, you are always going to hate yourself, not being able to stand who you are anymore.”

“I learned that life can completely change in the matter of 2 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes, and sometimes even 2 seconds, and there will be nothing you can do to prevent life from doing what it does. This lesson sounds a little bit cliche, but until you have experienced life changing literally in front of your eyes in the matter of someone saying two words to your face, it’s hard to really explain it. But with this lesson, that can be a really sad reality, comes the lesson that even the toughest things in life get better. Everything gets easier. Some things don’t go away all the time, and they come up in the toughest moments, but it will always get easier the more you let it.”

“When you open up to people, and when you except the help that everyone, including yourself, knows that you need, life becomes easier to live, and you no longer can feel the weight that was pushing and pressing down on you.”

“Time is not infinite, but it is continuous, and there will be days ahead where I look back and wish I truly learned this sooner.”

“There are things in this world that you will be in love with that give you every reason to turn away from.”

“The days that once seemed so short became too long, and there was no escape from the quietness and empty houses closing me in. It was a period of bliss that was at the time mistaken for loneliness, and I felt comfort and gained wisdom in being alone.”

“But that's what faith is for, believing in things that do not make logical sense, believing in things that we cannot see.”