Taking out the garbage

A friend of mine playfully stole my journal the other day. I was horrified. My journal is my life. My hopes, my dreams, my fears, my deepest darkest secrets are kept neatly tucked away in between the well worn pages of my journal. I pleaded with him to give it back, not to read it, not to reveal my inner core and leave me exposed. I felt vulnerable and a wave of nausea swept over me. My worst nightmare was about to come true, someone was going to read my words. The words that spill from my mind onto the page with no regard, no editing, no spell check. Pure unadulterated Fleur. Scary thought. Me in my moments of oh woe me, of inexplicable joy, of just about anything that fills my mind (which is a lot). At times it pours out of me with no off switch, no filter, just stuff. Sometimes legible, most times not. Words scrawled on a page – my words, but more importantly my feelings. As the old saying goes, the good, the bad and the ugly. And there is lots of ugly, let me tell you.

I pleaded, I bargained, I begged. He found it incredibly amusing as I was becoming obviously more and more distressed as the seconds ticked over into minutes. He laughed, smiled at me and said “I would not want to read your garbage anyway”. My WHAT!!!! My garbage! I was crushed, mortified, devastated that he thought my words, my precious words, but more importantly my feelings were garbage?!? How dare he! And he called himself a friend!  I was more upset over the taunt than the fact he had taken my journal. I almost handed it back and said here – read it. You will see it is not garbage, but my words, it is me and everything there is to know about me. They are important damn it, not garbage. Seeing my crest fallen look he explained “everything in our heads is garbage, it is good you are writing, it is like cleaning your head.” Bless. My dear friend, my dear Buddhist friend had said something so profound and he was right. My feelings are not garbage, it was not a personal attack on me, but the stuff that fills my head is just thoughts. The precious words that describe my deepest darkest fears, those words that try to capture the joys, the sorrows, the every thought that fills my head is nothing more than that – simply thoughts. 

So I continue to take out the garbage regularly. It is healthy to “clean your head” as my friend so eloquently put it.  And I feel all the better for it.  You dear reader happen to get the nice edited version, the version that is available for public viewing. Do not fear, the words that fill my well worn journal pages, my “garbage” will stay simply that.