The Commission of Omission

I tear through journals the way other people tear through snacks. The habit started innocently enough with an inviting empty notebook and an irresistible pen. Next thing I knew, I was juggling a pile of blank back-up journals, more pens than could possibly run dry in the course of a human lifetime, and three-and-a-half large plastic tubs filled with used volumes stashed away on the floor of my closet.

Those plastic tubs are where the problem lies.

I’ve written before about my major concern with my journals: what happens to them when I’m no longer available to explain, defend, discuss the entries? What happens if someone reads a section that not only makes them feel less than they are, but doesn’t represent how I truly felt about them? After all, my journal entries are not erudite reflections on the world around me. They’re more like workbooks, gathering my scattered thoughts and helping me reel them in. They can read pretty rough.

Because one concern is never enough, lately I’ve developed an additional one. Never mind what I’ve written in those volumes; what about the stuff I haven’t written? I’ve shared pivotal experiences and important conversations with people who matter deeply to me, yet didn’t record them in my journal. Could that make it seem like what happened between us didn’t matter, that it had no impact at all?

There are reasons why some significant events don’t show up in my journal pages, and none of those reasons have anything to do with not making a cut. Sometimes, a situation is too important or profound for words to do it justice. That may sound odd, given that I’m a writer. But I have great respect for both the depth of words and the reach of action, and some events feel too multidimensional to be confined by only two. Reflecting them accurately on paper requires time and space, and I don’t always have enough of either.

Sometimes, something that happens hurts too much. I need time for the fabric of my life to rearrange before I can write about the hit, because committing it to paper makes it “real.” This means an event can be long past by the time I get to it, the emotion of it diluted to a point where I can handle it.

I won’t lie: the weight of what to do with these journals has exercised a tiny bit of a chilling effect on what I write. There are thoughts I don’t want to commit to paper … which would seem to negate the point of a journal altogether. But journaling still works for me. My journal remains a place to process emotions that have nowhere else to go. My little part of the universe is probably a safer place because I keep a journal. I’m just more aware these days of causing future hurt.

I used to joke that I would reread each of my journals at the end of my life, burning or keeping pages as I went along. Back then, that day felt far enough away that I could smile at the image.

I’m not smiling anymore.

Whatever I decide to do with that mountain of journals, I hope they’re merely a footnote in the way people remember me. The absence of complete documentation only proves that I was too busy actually living to take the time to write everything down. I was fully present: loving, absorbing, being there. The journals aren’t an unabridged autobiography – they’re just the scrap paper that helped me show up for the real thing.