My Story
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I guess you could say I started writing down my story in 1999, when I was just 19. Something big happened (we’ll get to it, I promise). Afterwards, a friend and coworker gave me an empty journal with a note that she thought it might be helpful if I wrote things down. How right she was! It took me a few months to get to a place where I was able to write things down. At first, everything was too raw. Then I got really sick for months. And during all of that, I met and moved in with the man I would marry.
After things settled down a bit and I had some perspective on the situation, I began writing in that journal. Later, it was easier and faster for me to type and so I started writing on LiveJournal, sharing my thoughts with a few of my friends. When I stopped using LiveJournal, I printed all of my entries, which I stuffed in a box that made its way through all of our moves.
In 2005 I began writing about things that were much more personal in another journal. I kept up that habit, on and off, for about a year. Some days my thoughts filled pages. Often, weeks went by with no entries, but I kept the journal. In 2007 I had my first baby and every bit of energy went to motherhood. I’d ponder my experiences but it wasn’t until about 2015 that I began writing again, this time in a cheap spiral-bound notebook.
Last year I gathered all of my journals, along with the LiveJournal printouts. I spent days transcribing all of my entries into a google document. I included dates, photos, obituaries, websites where I’d done research, and all of my memories as best as I could remember. It all began with the diary my friend gave me for Christmas in 1999 and an obituary.
I’m so glad my friend gave me that journal because I now have all of my writing from the time things happened. I can look back now and think “oh, I completely forgot that happened!” or “now that I know this, that other thing makes sense!”. There are still a lot of things I don’t know and what I do know doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Last fall I took all of my journal entries and memories and tried to write something resembling a memoir. I say “resembling” because I don’t plan to publish it in book form. I just wanted to get everything together because i feel like my kids should have some understanding of me, I guess. It’s not the best because I’m not great at writing, but I felt the need to get it all down in one place.
I’ve been debating whether to share it with other people — when and how does one share everything that I experienced? Do I wait until people die and it’s safe? Or, do I share in the hopes that my story helps someone now?
It’s long, so buckle up!
