The Notebook

I keep a notebook, a diary if you will...in it I write my most private thoughts. Since starting my 21 Day Challenge, I've made an entry every day. Before this I could go days without writing in my diary, maybe even a month, nothing in my daily life seemed that important. But now, each night, after a day of battling against picking and my closet full of skeletons, ghosts, demons, what have you, I write in it all the thoughts that have collected in my head. Its usually at night that my thoughts and pain would make me pick at my arms till they were covered in open scratches, wounds, and scars. By the end of Day 8, I was in turmoil and tears as today brought back one of the most painful parts of my life I've struggled with for the last ten years. But tonight instead of picking at my arms, I wrote about the events of today and all my emotions until I worked them out, got to the bottom of them, and the once sharp unbearable pain was almost dull and bearable. For me wiritng is another way to keep my hands busy (pen to paper), more importantly to release the emotions that used to cause my picking. It doesn't matter if its one line, a paragraph, or page upon page, if I can let go and be honest, rather than bottling it up inside (however corny that way sound - but its the truth!) all the chaos in my mind seems to settle. My notebook is the one place where Im not judged, where I allow myself to think and be totally raw and unsensored and its an amazing weight off my shoulders. If anyone else is a writer out there, or feels that talking to a therapist or anyone else would be too exposing or hard, please feel free to try this, it saved me, and it might one day do the same for you. Cheers! ~Anne