"For years, I'd used these journals as a kind of inner courtroom, constantly building a case against myself or others. Every page held evidence of failures, proof of my profoundly advanced ability to gaslight myself. I could shrink or morph into whatever was requested for another person's comfort. Small flowered booklets documenting all the ways I couldn't get "it" right."
"But something strange happened as I flipped through them one last time. The first journal opened with the fervent prayers of a fifteen-year-old devout Christian girl, begging God to show her the way. The last one closed with a forty-year-old woman asking her spirit guides for direction. Different words. Different cosmic addresses. Same desperate energy. I was always asking someone else-something else-to save me."
A deliberate act of burning twenty-five years of journals marked an attempt to let go of persistent self-criticism and performed identities. The journals functioned as an inner courtroom, documenting failures and a pattern of gaslighting the self while shapeshifting to accommodate others. Early entries showed fervent pleas to God; later entries sought guidance from spirit guides, but the tone remained one of desperation and dependence. Repeated questions begged for external rescue and validation, revealing a long-standing belief that forces outside the self controlled life events. The act of release signaled a move toward owning agency and ending habitual externalizing.
Read at Tiny Buddha
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