I'm not sure what to say to you, or what you need. But I wanted you to know that someone read this and understood.

Last summer I got on a big clean out binge, I wanted to simplify my life. Minimize. You know. One huge project that had to be tackled was a large box of old journals and letters. From over the course of many years.

One of the journals was from a very dark period of my life. The darkest. A time when I went through a serious trauma. Over years, memories fade or sharpen, dull or maybe dispropirtionately come into focus. Distort in the re-telling. Details, minutiae, get lost.

So I plopped down and read that journal and it was the worst idea of recent memory. I cried until I vomited. Heaved with sobs, thought the pain might crack me. I got shot back instantly to a time and place in a way my own brain would never let me. I was like a tourist in my own torment, examining things I had "forgotten", conversations I was reading like a terrible play. Awful.

It was like a secondary trauma. My body and brain, for several days, reacted as if this was all happening to me again. I felt in the throes of active grief. From reading something years old. Sounds crazy I remember walking around holding my body in that strange posture of someone in deep pain. So carefully.

Why do I tell you this? Why am I over-sharing? Well. This is what I did: I burned that journal. I burned all of them. I tore a few pages of sweetness and goodness and love and a version of myself I wanted to remember existed once...but the terrible one? Gone. Ashes. Never was.

For me, a freeing thing was to realize this document held no purpose in life. It could only ever be a force of destruction. I would never, will never, reach some mythical place of enlightenment where it could be a tool of reflection or teaching. I can't tell you what it felt like to watch it burn. Didn't change anything, undo anything, even "heal" anything. But it's not in my home. I can never stumble upon it again and destroy and innocent sunny day. I will never regret it or miss it or wish I could see it.

I don't know how it is for you. Maybe not now. But think about it, that that book doesn't own you. Or represent you in totality.

Okay? Be careful out there.