Dear Diary

Looking back, my 9th birthday was one of the most important times in my entire life.

~I learned how to cook

~I got my first chores

~I got my first deck of tarot cards

~I learned that my mom was pregnant with my little brother

~And I got my first journal.

I truly believe this was the year that I started living.

 I remember my mom asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her I wanted to learn how to cook, that I wanted chores (ha!!) and that I wanted to start a hobby. Thanks to my grandfathers farm, we had TONS of fresh okra so she taught me how to make fried okra as well as grilled cheese. AWESOME!! I learned that hot oil and water do NOT mix, you don't cook everything on the highest setting and that taste testing everything was one of the perks of cooking!

Then, I got to start my first chores: cleaning the kitchen and doing dishes. Now I look back with a laugh because my mom is the QUEEN of neurotic cleaning. I learned all the nooks and crannies that were often over looked and thus began an ever long list of things that needed to be cleaned on a daily basis. Although my mom was overly OCD about cleaning the house, I love that she instilled such a strong cleaning ethic in us and, to this day, dirty dishes are my BIGGEST pet peeve. (And I currently live with my boyfriend and 3 male roommates- fml! lol)  

On my 9th birthday, I also learned that my mom was pregnant with my little brother, who is currently 18 and such a badass. Since I was 9 years older than him, I have truly seen him grow up. Once he was born, I had A LOT of responsibility with helping my mom with Adam. I was my moms built-in babysitter for him and my sisters, Sahra and Dakota, who also helped out a lot because we were all the same age. Being the oldest, I often had the brunt of the responsibility which has contributed to my current decision to not have kids as I feel that I already sort-of raised a few.  The four of us are extremely close to this day and I love that. 

 I also recieved some birthday money and my mom suggested that I use it to start my hobby. She told me that when she was my age, she started a journal and since I wanted to be JUST LIKE my mom, that's exactly what I did. 

Later that day, we went to K-Mart and as I browsed the journals, I spotted a small, burgundy   leather book with gold leaf pages, a small gold lock with a set of matching keys and two of the single most powerful words etched in gold on the front: Dear Diary.

That night, I put on my Mariah Carrey tape, sat on my bed and opened my little diary. I remember this incredibly overwhelming and intense feeling as I was to begin writing. I feel like I have used that feeling to gauge a lot of my emotions throughout life.  I am a pretty energetic person and I tend to absorb things in a fully dramatic way, so this feeling is something I am lucky enough to still experience when the time is right. It lets me know that I still have that passion and sense of wonder that I did almost 20 years ago. 

Now don't get wrong, I was NOT writing anything on a genius level. I wrote about N*Sync and Mariah Carrey and I wrote about my siblings and about my mom and dad and all of our pets. The thing that really got me excited was that I could write about ANYTHING I wanted to and when I read it back, I felt like I was actually talking to someone.  My little Diary was my best friend.  

That year, my Grandma also gave me a deck of tarot cards. It was a beautiful Aquarian deck, very worn and absolutely perfect. Since my parents were definitely NOT into that, it was given to me privately and I used my diary to take notes about my readings and draw my favorite cards. It was my first sense of the power that what I wrote was tucked away safely behind the little lock on the front of the Diary. Little did I know how flimsy that lock was...

Growing up, my little Diary (and the things I wrote in it) evolved into something that I used to effectively help me deal with life and all of its lovely little surprises. In middle school and high school I let my very best friends browse through the pages, sometimes to my demise. But I remember always remaining very candid with what I wrote and how I wrote. During high school, I had a semi-private blog on LiveJournal and my Diary was turning more into an artistic book of silly-ness and still very much a part of my life. Regardless of how much I posted online, nothing would ever be as satisfying as the feeling of physically writing something down. Ever. 

The first time someone ever breeched the lock of my journal, I felt like I had been betrayed on a level no one should ever experience, although we all do in same way or another. Growing up, my parents were very strict and stayed on top of us constantly to ensure that we were not sneaking off to get into trouble. We didn't really have social lives outside of school and if we did end up having a sleep over at a friends house, my mom was the one who called several times to check on us. 

I have this funky little journal
and I love how crazy the
journal prompts are

The one thing that I ever held close to me in secrecy, was my diary. Not that I had any REAL secrets to keep, but I had my whimsical thoughts and I wasn't going to let them go. One night my mom very openly told me that she read though my journal. Then she kind of made fun of me about the lack of real events (secrets) and the abundance of silly thoughts and wishful tangents. Not only was I upset that she snuck behind my back to look for evidence, but she paraded it in front of me and we both knew there was nothing that I could say or do about it. That night as I opened my journal, I wrote "Fuck you Mom!!" in giant letters and on the next page I wrote all of the things I wish I could say to her... I really laid her out, sort of lol. Then I ripped the pages out, took them to school and kept it taped in the back of my locker. There was something intoxicating about being able to say exactly what you want to your parents without dealing with the consequences of actually cussing them out in real life. Like I said, fantastic therapy in the form of pen and paper.  That was the beginning of me writing journal entries in the pages of my homework notebooks, completely undetected from my mom, and later taking it to school to glue into my actual journal. I felt like it was a betrayal of trust on my moms part and an even bigger betrayal to my journal.

  

This is definitely my most meaningful
tattoo... 

When I was 20, I got 'Dear Diary' (tastefully and boldy) tattooed on my chest. I felt like it something that I earned to have permantently on my body and have never had a moment of regret about it. Currently, my sweet little Diary has turned into a full blown art journal and now I write in this blog. I feel the same way about my writing that a mother would about her child. The concept grows up so fast and since I have maintained a healthy relationship with my writing, I have never felt resentful about the things have written. Embarrassed, maybe. But never hateful. 

Since I started writing, I have thrown a few journals away, buried a few and in fits of absolute chaos, I have utterly destroyed a few in the form of ripping them, hurling them at walls and taping them shut to make it impossible to read. It's part of the creative process.

I have tinkered with the idea of writing childrens books about adventures with imaginiary friends and household pets, but I am barely disciplined with my blog so I think I might go to a few writing classes, just to tighten up my skills. For now, I'll try to perfect my neurotic blogging and continue to keep up with my pen and paper companion. 

Here are a few glimpses of my art journal.... enjoy!

I LOVE mixed media in my journals

This was a page I made for my grandmas bday last year...

This is a daily reminder for myself...

I might do something like this for the cover of
my current journal. It's a Smashbook. HIGHLY
reccommend getting one, they are so much fun
and are sturdy enought to handle any medium
you want to use.