Really on journaling ...

Okay, so about this journaling, which is what I had originally set out to write about last night ...
I have loved journals. I started keeping my own in middle school. What first prompted me to write was Ann Frank's diary. I used to imagine that I would live through some very important historical event and my diary would be one of the few things left to document it. So I wrote. Mostly about silly things honestly! As I didn't have any historical thing happening, and honestly, were it happening, I probably would have been oblivious to the real impact of what was going on around me.
Anyway, I kept my journal. And as I mentioned yesterday I had the love of my life in high school. And so I wrote about him in my journal. And I wrote about my sad heart and the love that would not be and how I was sure I was destined to grow up old and lonely and bitter because no one would ever be as great as he was.
And that's when it happened. My younger sister (who was 3-4 years old at the time) went in my room, grabbed my journal, brought it to my dad and asked him to read it to her. And read it he did, although not to her.
I was so upset. I was devastated. He teased me, thought it was funny, and said half of it didn't even make sense to him.
I yelled at him, I went to my mom, I cried, I was determined my entire life was ruined. Well, my life was not ruined, but my trust was destroyed. I vowed to never write in a journal again. Because I didn't feel comfortable writing what was in my heart. And I didn't. And I took the diary my dad read and burned it. I was beyond upset.
I wish now I hadn't burned it. I'm sure it would have given me a few laughs now, and I wish I hadn't stopped keeping one.
I picked up journaling again briefly during my pregnancy with my oldest daughter. Mostly I wanted to journal the pregnancy to someday show to her. But it didn't last long. And I didn't think about it again.
Until March of 2004. I read about a group of moms who all kept journals for a week and read each other journals to better learn about each other ... to learn about moms who worked, moms who stayed home, moms with several kids, moms to one, etc, etc. I was a member of an AOL message board. I thought the idea sounded neat, so I went to my message board and proposed we all start blogs on-line to better learn about each other.
[I will interject here to say I am responsible for Actual Unretouched Photo, My Life or Something Like it, sMoov, as well as a few more but those links I could pull up very quickly]
And so began my new blogging fever.
At first I mostly blogged about fluff ... not really ready to trust and really expose myself. But as I blogged and read more blogs I felt a need to open up more. So I did. But I started another blog through tripod. I released the address to only a few people and wrote to my hearts content. I made sure to not use my families names so no one could google my family and find the site. I wanted to be able to write freely, but I wanted protection from people reading it who shouldn't and laughing - much as my dad did that day roughly 12 years ago. It stung. And it hurt. And I don't want to go through that again.
Now I blog sometimes getting deep and really opening up. And sometimes I blog still guarded about what I will release.
What I will do with these blogs of mine I do not know. Will I save all the entries? Do I want my children to someday read all of this? Honestly, my husband doens't even read this blog - he knows it exists, he's never asked for the address and well, I've never offered it freely. Not that he doens't know anything I write about in here, but I don't know, it would seem weird to me if he was reading it. Maybe that makes me weird.
But that is my story on blogging, on journaling, on writing my deepest darkest thoughts ... or on not writing those deep dark thoughts.