Day 19

Blue pages and a long-gone love

The Advent Cal(m)endar contains habits to increase clarity, focus and calmness. Every second day, I open a door and post about my experiences.

Hi readers! Today we have a straightforward habit:

Do you keep a journal? I guess Substack might be a bit of a magnet for people who do…

Most of my journaling happened in my teenage years. I remember one journal in particular. It was a square book with blue pages, and every single one of those pages was about my love interest at the time, Marcus from riding school. Marcus was a year older than me, had a strange hairstyle and was cool and confident. Looking back, it seems surprising that such a cool guy spent so much time at a horse place with his mother and his sister. But there he was, and he stands out as the great love of my youth, as I was into him for a whole year. Page after page described how Marcus briefly smiled at me, how his arm briefly touched mine when he passed me in the dark corridor where we hung up our jackets. I spent hours bent over my desk in the evening, writing about all my feelings and experiences (if you can call a faint smile on Marcus’s face an experience) by candlelight and soft music.

In hindsight, these journal entries might seem silly. Marcus was friendly and sometimes flirting, but he probably never even really saw me. I was excessively quiet and cannot remember a single conversation with him lasting for more than 30 seconds. My strong feelings for him were clearly not reciprocated – because sure enough, one day he turned up with a girlfriend who most definitely wasn’t me. From that point on, entries became less and less frequent. By then, I had also slowly started to notice his distasteful jokes, the constant smoking, the questionable guys he was hanging out with; and the picture of Marcus I was in love with was slowly crumbling. So, I wasn’t deeply heartbroken. It was just that for a while, without Marcus, there wasn’t much to say.

After a few years, I threw the journal away, thinking it had all been an illusion and that I was too old and level-headed to swoon over a guy. Now, older again, I know: Yes, it was an illusion, but one of those illusions we maybe have to fall for, at some point on our journey through life. Because to distinguish between illusion and reality, we have to get familiar with both. And now I can think of those days fondly. Of the smell of horses in summer, Marcus leaning on the gate to the field, smoking, nonchalant. Of being alone with Marcus in the old stables, clearing away the saddles after a long ride through the winter forest, feeling cold, tired and perfectly happy. Had I not made the effort to write down all my stories in those blue pages, maybe I would not have been able to place them within the bigger picture of my life; maybe the memories would have faded by now.

For many years, I stopped writing. I felt embarrassed. Not because I feared someone else might read my journal – I rather felt awkward when re-reading my writing myself, to such an extent that writing became impossible. I have only recently started journaling again (on white, dotted pages, mind you), now in my 40s; and I do not know what has changed. Maybe I am finally more confident. But I also believe I have just become more stable over the years in my feelings and opinions, so that what I write today is less likely to seem alien to the future me reading it in ten days or ten months (who knows about ten years?).

While I journal again, it’s certainly not a daily habit – I mostly write when I am contemplating complex topics and want to sort my thoughts. I included the habit in the Advent Cal(m)endar because I’d like to write more consistently about the everyday experiences and my observations in nature, even if it’s just a few sentences each day. It will be nice to keep those memories – just like the old stories of Marcus.

Happy reading and writing, everyone!

Hannah