Holding my life in my hands

This year it’s made out of purplish leather. It’s a very solid hard cover and there is a hand written poem by Edgar Allen Poe on the front. My pen runs smooth on the paper and it’s a joy picking it up every night before I go to bed. It’s nothing but beautiful and I love the feel of it in my hands.

I have kept a journal since I was thirteen years old. I have been ending my day by writing it down every day in my life but the twelve first years.

My first journal was purchased at the bookstore in the small town south of Umeå where I grew up. The dates were printed on the pages, so whatever was on my mind it had to fit on one page. I can still recall standing at the back wall in the little store around Christmas picking the journal, as I did for many years. When I started high school and moved to Umeå, the range of books working as a journal grew bigger, and I moved over to hard cover note books, allowing me to adjust my writing after my needs.

My journal was and is my best friend. I probably wasn’t perceived as a lonely girl, but within me I was. I had friends, but I always felt different and estranged. I think I took life very seriously even at a young age. And I didn’t have parents to turn to when I was troubled.

My father was a warm and loving man but not really equipped for listening to and advising a teenage daughter. My mother was a complex woman who was the root to my alienation and therefore impossible to turn to. She was anxiety-ridden and punishing so whatever my problems were I needed to keep them from her. As she was so different from other moms, I couldn’t share that matter with my friends. I was ashamed and sometimes I even defended her, coming up with good arguments for her behavior. I guess I was a codependent family member. My journal was the only one I could talk to, and I don’t think I would have lived today without my journal, always there. My rescue. My best friend.

At times, going back in my journals, I wish I had been writing more. There are allusions, half images and glances, making me curious about details, about the whole picture. My memory is very good and I remember more from my life than most people do, still, there are of course lost pieces. And sometimes I wonder how my ability of remembering is connected to the fact that I have been writing most of my life down.

The older I have gotten the more I have been writing. The more challenging life has been, the more I have been writing. And the lonelier my life has turned, the more I have been writing.

I need to like the things around me. I need to love the esthetics of the couch I am spending most of my hours in. My cereal bowl needs to make me happy, so does my teacup. The music I am playing needs to fit my emotional mood. The light from the lamp needs to be right. The wall paint needs to be the one I had pictured. And I am designing my dinner table so that I get what I am imagining.

My hands are holding the journal every evening. I am closing my day 365 times a year with reaching for that book. I need to touch something that is inspiring.

Some years have been entered in complete darkness. New Years 2009 when I had a malignant cancer tumor in my breast I picked a dark brown leather journal. There wasn’t room for being inspired. My body and soul were scared and lonely. The year after, being a survivor, the journal was high pink linen (not breast cancer pink but high pink) as in I am living, I am actually living and I am ready for life!!

For years I have wanted to design my own journal. As I have a lot of photos in my archives I’ve been thinking it would be cool to create my own cover. This fall I finally got to it and put a lot of time into it. I was so excited when the books arrived and terribly disappointed watching my pictures look like a storm cloud had parked over them. Contrast, dynamics, colors, none of all that was there! I made a complain, reassured that they would fix it. The second arrival didn’t happen until ten days in to January, and my heart just sank when the outcome was exactly the same as the first one.

At this time I was trying to talk some sense into myself: Maria, this isn’t so bad. The journal still has a nice feel to it. You can get used to this! You don’t actually have to LOVE everything around you to get through the day…

Well, I made a deal with myself; if I couldn’t find anything in the local book store that would make me a little bit more happy than this big disappointment, I would adjust and check in to this reality of mine.

So, I couldn’t have been more surprised to find the most beautiful collection of Canadian handicraft leather note books in amazing designs if I had bumped into them at Barnes and Nobles or some well equipped art supply in Seattle! Expensive of course, but there it was, the book that will harbor the next year of my life and be the last thing on my mind and in my hands every day 2014!

Now, I could make this a cute learning story about fighting hard for something, having to let go, and something else will come your way. That’s actually what if felt like when I breath taken laid my hands on that gem. But I know that life isn’t that simple. Sometimes you have to let go, and nothing else comes your way. The only thing there is, is a deep dark whole. A vast cold tundra. And it’s cold and dark forever.

Life isn’t always a success story. In this time and age we are run over by the message that we are in control of our lives, the only thing we need to do is set a goal, think positive and work hard. I find that approach extremely cynical. Life, as we know it, can change in a split of a second no matter what are goals are, however positive we think and how hard we work.

I am sometimes wondering about the meaning of my life. I don’t know. I don’t know what the meaning of my life is. But there is my bookshelf. Filled with my journals. I am looking at it. I can follow my preferences and taste when it comes to the design of them through the years. I can spot the years I was indifferent, just grabbed something to write in. The years I had purpose and goals. The dark ones. The life changing ones. The happy ones. I am watching my life neatly sorted in colors and shapes. And I am thinking: this is the meaning of my life. The documentation is the meaning of my life.

I am holding my purplish stunning journal in my hand. Of course I did the right thing not adjusting myself to a storm cloudy cover picture that would make my heart sink every night at lights out. This is my life! I am holding my life in my hands. And this year I feel obligated doing everything I can to fill the blank pages between that gorgeous cover with days resembling the sense of the book. Right now – and now is all we know - my life isn’t gorgeous, but it isn’t dark brown either. And I feel my journal will inspire and help me making the best out of it.