I've been away from leisure writing for so long, it's like I've forgotten how to write.
I picked up a pen to journal for the first time in almost two years. It was awkward at first, constantly wondering if this is the right word I want to use, should the word be spelt with an a or an e, are the sentences getting too long. And then somehow, music playing, words flowing, I stopped worrying about my penmanship (it was terrible), the spacing between words (hilariously uneven), and the words I used (I have three languages in one sentence), and I just wrote. I wrote about the memories I had stored away, I remembered someone I haven't thought about in five years, and I finally started to process the feelings that shaped me in the past half decade.
Half a decade.
That's how long I've refused to deal with, looking back, one of the most important turning points in my life.
I've talked about that memory exactly three times in the past five years.
It's not a traumatising memory. Quite the opposite, it's one of my most beautiful memories. Which is why I never understood why I'd always prefer talking about my mental illness, my insecurities, or heck, even my feelings, before talking about that memory. Or why I lost it the one time my best friend tried to bring it up in a conversation years ago.
But yesterday, I wrote about it. And I was brought back to August, 2013. For the first time in five years, I remembered the 96 hours that helped shape an important part of who I am today (the optimistic and witty part, not the dripping in sarcasm bit), and I processed the residual confusion.
In the seven page journal entry, I slowly started to understand.
I'm still not ready to talk about that time again just yet, but what I'm trying to say, in this mess of a ramble, is that I'm going to learn how to write again. I'm going to start journaling and I'm going to start blogging again. It might be an awkward mess for the first several entries, but hopefully, things will start getting back on track soon.
And yes, I know, I've said it multiple times since 2016, but this time, I really want to learn how to write again.
