The Girl in My Old Journals

I’ve been reading my old journals lately. The pages smell like another lifetime — inked in longing, grief, and hope I didn’t yet know how to hold. The girl in my old journals loved hard, even when it hurt. She mistook intensity for intimacy and silence for rejection. She wrote about people who made her feel small, then apologized for wanting more.

She said she loved herself, but I can tell she didn’t like herself. She admitted it. Her handwriting curls around insecurities she couldn’t name — lines about her body, her worth, her ability to be loved. Yet, between those confessions, she dreamed wildly. She wrote about passing the bar, making six figures, building community, and creating a life filled with peace. She believed in a future version of herself she couldn’t yet meet, but was already becoming. Just in a different way than she once imagined. She dreamed the dreams she thought she should, not the dreams she desired.

When she wrote about love, it was desperate — reaching, pleading, always proving. She confused connection with salvation, mistaking chaos for chemistry. And still, she hoped. Every word was an attempt to be seen. Every entry a reaching toward something sacred.

Now, when I write about love, it feels different. Softer. I don’t need to be saved anymore. I’ve learned that love isn’t supposed to hurt to feel real. My almost forever lover taught me that. He’s not a fantasy or a fixation — he’s a safe home, a slow burn, a mirror that reflects back peace instead of pain.

Reading those old pages, I don’t cringe anymore. I grieve her, a little. I thank her, too. She carried the weight of becoming me — the woman who finally found stillness after years of spinning.

The girl in my old journals didn’t know she was writing her way toward freedom. She thought she was just surviving the ache. But every word was a seed and now, I’m the bloom.