Feeling Reflective

The last place I lived in was a somewhat old house that our rental company had just bought. It had been awhile since anyone had lived in it, and being old, it was full of all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies. One of the doors in our walk in closet had to be taken off the hinges to get to another interior storage closet. Inside we found a few beer bottles and two notebooks that had been left there by a previous tenant. The notebooks turned out to be journals.

It’s interesting to get glimpses into the secret parts of other people’s lives that you normally wouldn’t get to see otherwise. I find things of this nature fascinating. I am intrigued by all the things that people feel, but do not share with others. When I read them, I feel guilty because they are someone’s private thoughts, yet I cannot bring myself to get rid of them because they are thoughts that someone obviously felt were important enough to record.

I keep a journal myself. I don’t write in it regularly, just when I’m feeling emotional or want to remember something in particular. I have always been horrified at the thought that anyone would ever read it, and I wonder if this person would feel the same. Why is it that we feel the need to keep so much to ourselves? And why are we so afraid to be who we really are? Looking back on my life, there are a few times when I wish I would’ve told people how I really felt, or how much they meant to me. Maybe they already knew, but maybe they didn’t. I just wish it wasn’t so hard for me to say these things to the people that I care about most.

I’m thinking about sending the journals to the Found Magazine website. I’m not sure yet. I’ve had them for awhile now, and I don’t know why I hang onto them. I guess I just hope that the person that wrote those journals found what they were looking for.