Snap Shot

     Last night I started reading Ariel by Sylvia Plath. The version that I have is the restored version with the forward by Sylvia Plath's daughter, Frieda Hughes. While I was reading it I began to realize that she was strongly emphasizing that Ariel contained poems that were just a moment in Sylvia Plath's life. All of her writing was an example of her feelings at a given time. A snap shot of the way she was feeling. And just because Ariel happens to contain some of her latest works - the ones closest to when she killed herself - doesn't mean that  these were her feelings throughout her whole life. Frieda does say that her mother was plagued by depression her whole life, but that the feelings that ultimately led to her suicide would have eventually passed, just as other feelings had passed before.
     This got me thinking about my own journal. I'm no Sylvia Plath. My writing is solely about my feelings. I cannot channel the energy into anything great - a poem or a novel. But like her poems and The Bell Jar, my journal is a snap shot my life from early December until mid/late summer. Everything I write is a freeze frame of how I am feeling. Some entry's are very sad, some are very happy, some are drawings, quotes, some are completely irrational, sometimes I color. All of this is held together in one little book.
     I got an unlined journal because it made me feel free. I wouldn't have to abide by the lines. I wouldn't be confined and obligated to write between them. With no lines I am free to write sideways, draw, color, scribble, write really big or really small. I like this. I like having that freedom.
     To go even broader an document is just a picture of a certain time and place. A journal or a scrap book. A newspaper, a book, a photograph. These all show a different time. A time that is now passed, even if it was just moments ago. That moment is gone forever, but it is still there in the story.
     My journal is a snap shot me as a 19 year old, a 20 year old, someone who is lost, someone who is trying to figure out who they are, someone who is struggling sometimes, someone who is fragile, someone who is on the edge of either really succeeding and figuring life out or failing and being destined to live in the fog of her brain. My journal tells who my friends are. It tells what I did. What I liked and didn't like. Someday I might be embarrassed to look back on it. But I'm not yet. I love looking back on it and seeing where I was in December and what the second half of my sophomore year looked like. Whether I like it or not my journal is a snap shot of who I was and who I am. It may not be an actual photograph, but it certainly paints a picture. My journal is a snap shot of me in one moment of my life.