the girl who used to write

When I was seven, my grandmother gave me a Little Mermaid journal. Ariel was on the cover, and the journal became a place that belonged only to me. I started writing in it in the 1990s, when my thoughts could be kept between those pages.

Writing stayed with me through my teenage years. It was a cathartic release: somewhere to put the feelings I didn’t know what else to do with. I loved it, and for a long time, I kept coming back to it.

Then my godmother died. I stopped writing at 27. I don’t have a tidy explanation for what happened to the words after that. I just know that the journal went quiet, and so did I.

Eleven years later, I want to write again. This time, I want to share it. That feels strange when writing has always been so private. I’m not sure how my diary connects to anyone else, or if it needs to. Sometimes it feels like emotional masturbation. Maybe that’s exactly what it is.

Still, I want to begin. Not with a lesson or a neat ending, but with the fact that I used to write—and that I’m here, writing again.