When I Used a Pencil

Before I had a blog, before I knew what a blog was, I had a no. 2 pencil that must be sharpened and I had a hardback journal with pages that smelled of ink and libraries. I kept a journal all through middle school, high school and college. Every now and then I'd throw out all my old journals. I don't know why. Maybe I felt that I was only writing for myself, and so there was no need to keep chronicles of adventures I'd never have again, people I'd never see again, places and events I wanted to forget. I wish I had those journals now though.

One month after I graduated college I quit writing. Writers are "oppressed", aren't they? I was a married college graduate whose job it was to care for my husband and home. Gone was the teen angst, the girlish catty drama, college adventures and dreams of what "might be." What "might be" had become what "was" and there was nothing to write about.

When I first became pregnant I felt the desire to write again. One creative process begetting another, maybe? My first pregnancy journal was difficult to write. It began with such promise and so much excitement. I was pregnant! I was going to be a mother! My happiness quickly turned to horror as hyperemesis descended upon me. There would be days, then weeks between entries. The pages were full of morose musings and fogged with depression. The neat handwriting turned into barely-visible scrawls because I was too weak to hold the pencil properly. There were little dots of green and yellow vomit stains. With everything I lived through in that pregnancy--the hyperemesis, the "homelessness", the hurricane, the gallbladder attacks, the cesarean--I think it could rightly be subtitled "the little book of horrors".

Most of what I've written on this blog was written with some time and space (and sweet, precious children) between my writing and the actual events. I have my journals though, I thought I'd share a little from them, starting with my first pregnancy.