I feel as though I should make some sort of statement now that my journal is open again.

But truthfully, I'm not sure exactly what to say.

I've spent a week going through it all - a week because at times it became too overwhelming for me to continue reading. My emotions ranged from happiness to sadness to intense anger and back to happiness again - happiness because despite not wanting to re-experience my past, I still felt a sense of pride at how the words formed together into sentences and paragraphs that conveyed exactly what I felt at any given time.

One or two entries fell to the private zone, and some portions of text are no longer visible to the masses.

When it was all said and done, most of what I'd written I decided to leave open. For better or for worse, despite any embarrassment I might feel now over how I felt then, I had to remain true to myself, and to this journal. You can't edit away the past, no matter how much you might want to - you can only hope to learn from it.

That said, to steal a phrase from the writings of someone I respect (and who gave me some wise advice this weekend on the whole matter), at times I have felt the words in my journal have portrayed me as a train-wreck of sorts. To quote from what I said to him:

"[T]he journal is only a small part of who I am. I may write about certain emotions I'm feeling at that moment but they don't necessarily pervade my daily life. Yet, I feel more compelled to write when there is something to be purged, and not write when everything's fine - thus leaving the appearance that I'm consumed with only darkness, when I'm not."

And I hope he won't mind if I quote his reply here, because it was dead on:

"Who in the hell is inspired when everything is fine?"

Jay Allen, thank you. =)

But to soothe myself over the feeling of having displayed only the wrecked side of myself to the world, I turned to the offline documentation I also have of this portion of my life - email (yes, I have saved all that crap. Incredible, isn't it?) and other pieces that show me what else was going on during that time - communications that contributed to my overall confusion about what was really happening.

And all I can say is, well, it's no fucking wonder I was so mixed up, given all the mixed messages I was receiving.

For so long now, I have thought there was something inherently wrong with me, that I was blind where I needed to have vision, that I was crippled where I needed to stand tall. It had finally gotten so bad that I decided my only way out of this hell was to seek therapy, hoping some stranger could pinpoint exactly what flaw it was in me that kept me in this place after all this time.

I may still decide to seek therapy, but at least now I'll go in with the knowledge that it wasn't all my fault. I may have misread some signs that meant something else altogether, but I do know that I didn't misread them all.

So, bit by bit, even as I hope to continue to write about my current life (regardless of what others may think or misunderstand about what they read), I will continue to bring those offline pieces into my online world, even if they must remain private where only I and a few select others can see them. This may be my past, but I have a need to understand this particular situation in a way that I cannot explain. But I hope that fashioning all the pieces together into some semblance of order will bring me the clarity I need.

To hell with those who see only a train wreck. I know that my train is riding the very track on which it needs to be, speeding toward it's destination.