Justine's Journal #40

52 Weeks 500 Words

This is how it began: Justine (not her real name) decided to write 500 words (or as near as), anything goes, per week for 52 weeks. She would then submit it for anonymous posting, via me, her friend. Perhaps a pattern will emerge from her words, but at this stage it’s more an experiment I have agreed to share in. I’ll attempt to draw conclusions at the end of this. Stay tuned if this resonates with you.

Week 40

"It’s Monday and I feel fearful today. I am writing those words now, because I know it will pass (or I’ll force it to pass) and I will gloss over this feeling, ignore that it happened.

It’s Tuesday and I deliberately opened this document, knowing what I wrote yesterday, to gaze for a while at these words. Fear did pass, as suspected, and now I find recording the feeling has left a sour taste in my mouth. I am such an idiot, for there is nothing wrong with admitting how I feel.

It’s Wednesday and I have to tell you yesterday I just closed the document because I did not know what point I was trying to make. Actually I still don’t, but now this daily sequence format has me wondering. Usually I start a post midweek and work on it now and again until the final tweak on Saturday when I email it through for uploading. Sometimes, I admit, I write it on the Saturday before sending, but those don’t happen so often. And now this. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? What am I meant to learn? What prompted me to change the format this week? Fear has something to do with it, I think. Fear of what?

It’s Thursday and last night I found myself stopping what I was doing on many occasions to examine my inner self. I wrote the word fear on a piece of paper and stuck it to my fridge to prompt me. You must understand, the issues I share in this online journal are the broader concepts that serve to affect me on a weekly basis. As mentioned before, I have a journal now, an actual book, and every night I write the day’s real and immediate feelings in there. The small stupid stuff, the emotions I think are not worthy of telling anyone about. I don’t reread them to compose a post; in fact I have never turned back more than two pages to see what I wrote before. At this point, for me, going back isn’t the best idea. I don’t want to see what was, I prefer to move forward, so I purge nightly and go on. Now this. This morning I realised what the fear was about, after a restless night. I fear being alone again.

It’s Friday and I haven’t heard from my partner in two weeks. There is the fear. He left on a family thing for the east coast, driving, and I heard, via a text, he arrived safely and then no more. Is this relationship coming to an end? Have family told him this has no future, to let me go? Has it now run its course? He doesn’t answer my calls and now I no longer phone him because I’m thinking this makes me too needy and will chase him even further away. I could have said this on Monday, but I realise I could not admit to this fear and then go on and cope with life around me. Tears drip onto my desk at this moment, for I wonder now how I will cope having shared the words that signify change.

It’s Saturday and I will soon email this. I toyed with the idea of deleting this document and writing something else, but now I think my feelings may help someone else and I choose to let it stand.

At two this morning loud knocking woke me and I found my man standing at my door. He lost his phone! He could not remember my number, for the only place he recorded it was in his phone! He has been through hell trying to let me know all is well!

See how we jump to the worst conclusions first? We judge too quickly when we should allow time to tell us the truth. All is well and now there is no more fear."