Living in the Present and Compulsive Journal Writing

This is a photo of a couple decades of personal journals and all the pages I've deleted from them . (Actually this is the second go-round).
After a year of spiritual searching this is my attempt to live in the present moment and accept that the past no longer exists.

We all know that the past is gone, but sometimes our minds and hearts do not accept this fact.  I ripped out, shredded or whited out almost half of every journal because they were filled with angst, depression, sadness, regrets and embarrassing entries. I have had a compulsive need to write every emotion and thought in hopes of understanding myself and my life better. It's just my way, but my self-expression needs have been excessive as well as my incessant need to understand everything about my life.

While it is comforting to know how far those situations and my emotional life have come over the years they are not things I want to remember any longer - about myself or anyone else for that matter.

We all grow and change and learn throughout life and at my age I have nothing left to prove. I do not have a need to be right - just to be happy.  Forgiveness becomes easier and easier as I go through life. Not sweating the small stuff is also easier now and even addressing the small slights in life seems so silly in retrospect.

This is a goal I've had for retirement - having the time to reread these many journals, do some reminiscing, and put them in the past where they belong. (Also, knowing that someone could read my years of instability was a good motivator as well!)

But there are many, many pages left. Page upon page of the joy my children have given me through the years, of falling in love and marrying the love of my life at age 40, of singing, traveling and writing, of friends and family gatherings… many joys that I hope to read about again someday and know that while I spent many years in emotional pain and necessary growth -  it has been a life of many joys as well.