Hey. So I went thru some of my old journals. I was looking for my bucket list of stuff I want to do before I die. I want to try to accomplish some of the things on my list yhis summer that I have been putting off.
I found an older version of my list, but not before reading some of my journal entries from almost 20 years ago. Total mind &uck. A lot of it is dumb stuff and a lot of me saying the same thing over and over.

Been the one journal was around the time I first started seeing a therapist for my depression and it sounds like I was actively suicidal much of the time. Which breaks my heart but also makes me realize I need to destroy this shiit so when I die nobody else comes across them and reads them. I don’t want anyone to have to know what it felt instead my head when I was all fcked up. Especially bc I usually only wrote when feeling down.

So I am gonna burn them all. I wrote to get thru stuff and since I am still here they must have helped, but now their existence is giving me worry so I think it’s time to say goodbye. I may rip out a few pages or drawings I really want to save; but otherwise I think it’s time for them all to go. Bonfire at my house! Lol.
Just wondering-do u all keep your old journals? If so have you gone back and reread them? Would you want people that find and read them after you are gone?
I think the most discouraging thing I learned by reading them is that I sound the same in my head now as then. Perhaps I have not really grown all that much or gotten much better than back then- I am still a mess just older. Just dealing with it a tiny bit better? Idk. It did reassure me that I really was that bad off, as I sometimes wonder if I just exaggerated how bad things were.

Anyway this is a random post but I am curious what people do with their old journals. I think I will read them all before getting rid of them. But no more saving them for some imaginary memoir I will write someday. I’m gonna light em up and watch it all burn in my fire pit. Sounds very cathartic.
Take care.