(… and the truths I’ve learned.)
It’s funny how old journals can hold so much of you.
I stumbled upon some of my own the other day. They were the cheap ones you could get from the dollar store around the street, barely held together by rusted wire and cracked glue and sheer luck. When I first got them, they were the most important things I had. Wondering if I could glean something of value from these yellowed pages, I got comfortable and began to read a random entry.
What I read hit me in the gut. It wasn’t an entry I remembered writing, but the voice it spoke with was undoubtedly my own – much younger, more confused, more angry. The ink had sliced across the thin canvas, all jagged points and broken lines, telling the story of a girl lost in world full of so much noise and distraction and lies.
You are ugly, one of the lines spat out. You’re too fat. Too dark. There’s no way anyone can find you pretty.
An image flashed in my mind of a short Filipina girl with an awkward haircut and dark skin continuously dotted with acne struggling to fit into a pair of jeans. After throwing the jeans across the room in frustration, she stared at herself in the mirror, pressing her cheeks down, sucking her stomach in. When that didn’t work, she resigned to hiding herself under a too-large jacket and stretchy pants . At school, she kept her head down and tried to pretend she didn’t hear the other girls giggling and pointing at her. From afar, she longingly envied the girls with pretty faces and beautiful hair, wondering how on earth she could become one of them.
You are stupid, another line in the journal hissed. You trip over broken English. You always stutter. Why aren’t you always the first to answer the question?
Another image – stacks of books towering over the girl. All kinds of books: tomes of history, massive encyclopedias, books dictating math and science. She devoured each book like it was the last one she would ever read, eyes bright with determination. She sounded each foreign word in her head, scribbled practice equations across scraps of paper, and memorized as many equations as she could. But not matter what she did, she could never find the right words to say in front of others without halting and trailing off feebly. No matter how much she studied, it took her a little while longer to understand what was happening in class. The boys jeered and laughed at her slow responses, completing workbook pages as if it was nothing to them.
Worthless, the lines go on and on, endless and vicious throughout the journal. Useless. Pathetic. Disappointing.
The last page was empty, and so was my heart. How could I have been so cruel to myself? What did I believe that made me write such terrible things about who I was as a young girl just trying to find her way in the world? What had happened that had made me so critical of my shortcomings, which in hindsight were not things to be ashamed of at all?
Although separated by a vast ocean of time from this girl who poured herself into this old journal, I knew I had to do something. I had to make an effort to reconcile who I was and who I am now, to find peace in the fact that I was no longer who I thought I was.
This story will not end here, I decided. This story is just beginning.
I grabbed a pen and began to write:
You are beautiful, I started gently, you are compassionate and loving. Fearless. You have the best laugh and you’ve been told you smell like comfort, which somehow makes you think of cookies and milk – which is awesome by the way.
It’d taken a long time for me to accept that there were different kinds of beauty, each one no more or less beautiful than the other. It was not my fault that society decided to deal its cards to the beauty that was shown only on the surface. My beauty was not determined by the shape of my eyebrows, or the makeup that covered up my natural blemishes, or the shiny jewelry I donned on occassion. No, I decreed, my beauty came from within, the only beauty I could mold and shape by my own choices and desires. I was sunshine laughs and red lipstick, steadfast service to those in need and unwavering honesty, topped with flowers in my hair and the sharp click of heels in the halls of the honors college.
You are brilliant, I continued with rising energy, and no grades or amount of numbers will ever be able to show the strength of your mind, the ways you think, or the libraries you’ve built slowly yet steadily. You have magnificent ideas and even if you don’t know the answers right away, you know you can get there as long as you work hard.
Just like beauty and its many fantastic variations, intelligence boasted its own wide array of differences, each no more or less intelligent than the other. There was interpersonal intelligence, the gift of being able to reach out to others and help them come together. Physical intelligence, a mastery over one’s body to create meaningful action like sports or dance. Scientific intelligence, a powerful tool in tackling the world’s many problems. Intrapersonal intelligence, an understanding of oneself. I’ve learned that people are so smart in their own ways, and realizing the magnitude of that was like seeing a mosaic come to life. I didn’t have to be a straight A student to be considered “smart” – I only had to use the best of what I was good at, and work to improve the areas I was weak in for my own betterment.
You are worthy, I let the truth flow across the page. Needed. Beloved. Cherished. You have a whole world waiting for you. You have stars in your eyes and fire in your bones. You are made of stardust and wonder, the culmination of a thousand unspoken miracles and a million chances thrown into the cosmos. You know what truly matters in the end – family, real friends, love and trust and hope. You are a warrior, a healer, a sister, a daughter, a student, a teacher, a bright-burning soul always looking up and ahead.
When there was only enough room for a few more lines, I finally finished:
We spend so much time posing for the sculptor to shape us in their image, we often forget that we can carve ourselves as works of art beyond all comparison. So pick up your pen and write your own story. Live radiantly as the stars and become what you are meant to be.
I smiled and closed the journal, this part of the story finally finished.
I stood up and reached for a new journal, its fresh pages awaiting the next chapter. I picked up my pen and began, Dear journal…