Journaling is an important part of my self-care routine. Journaling helps me process my thoughts in different ways. It also gives me a place where I can pour my thoughts and then close the book on them, literally. Yet sometimes, sometimes journaling also gives me blank pages.
Sometimes this is writer’s block. But I can usually get around that by just writing about what happened that day. After all, it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare since I am the only one who will ever likely read the journal. No, instead what blank pages usually means is that I have something that I’m struggling to admit, even to myself. It is something I know I need to work on, that I know I need to process, but that is stuck somewhere between my brain and my arm.
Early on in my recovery I would use this as an excuse to skip journaling. I was avoiding the demons I didn’t want to admit to myself. Yet now, I chip away at the blank pages. Writing around the thing I know I don’t want to admit to myself until it was all but staring me in the face.
Then I can admit it. I can write about it. I can process it.
Blank pages were once an absence of progress, a block to my recovery. Now they are an opportunity. They are an opportunity to fill them up with darkness that I might not want to admit, even to myself. Yet once the darkness is out, the words can flow and the healing can begin.
Like I said, now I look at blank pages as an opportunity. And I hope someday so do you.
The Dark Tales Project 