Three years ago, I was not who I am today and never would’ve thought I would be. 

Imagine a girl who was so lonely and afraid of big crowds because she had no one to stand with, she’d leave class before the bell rang so that she can get to Tim Hortons before everyone else did and saw her alone. Imagine a girl who would hide out in the washrooms because everyone with their friends was a terrifying sight. Creative writing was the reason she’d get up and go to school every day for two years. Writing was an escape route she never knew she had, and she’d still be stuck if it weren’t for those times spent in that class. 

 

Going through that Sarah’s previous journals was a journey for her, and here are some paths she took along the way. 

 

Grade ten.

 

“Why I Write”

I feel like writing is essential to everyday life. It is very important to get your voice to be heard, but sometimes talking isn’t always the best way to be heard. It is something about getting things written out that makes me feel like a physical weight has been lifted off my shoulders if I write about how I am feeling. Nobody even has to read what I’ve written in order for me to not feel alone. With just my pencil and paper, I feel sane and grounded, and I’m reminded that bad feelings do not last forever. There really is just something about writing things down that helps me relax and feel less stressed out. Like I said, nobody has to read what I write for me to be heard, but if someone does come around to read something I wrote, it could either end in a knowing conversation or a disaster and many trust issues. 

 

This still remains true, and always will.

 

“I Hope, I Believe”

I believe there is happiness behind all the disaster.

I believe there is someone who truly cares about me.

I believe that my life will be filled with self-love. 

I also believe that those beliefs are hard to believe in.

Who can be happy all the time? 

No one. 

The answer is obviously no one. 

If you turn that question around to who can always be sad all the time, that is a question that I can answer yes to. 

I can be sad all the time. 

There are glimpses of happiness here and there, but depression seems to always overpower the good. 

There is never a time where I was enjoying myself and the feeling of loneliness or gloominess didn’t dwell upon me. 

I do believe happiness will come, someday. 

 

She’s glad she believed because she got what she hoped for.

 

“A Letter To Depression”

Depression is such a powerful yet unexplainable emotion. 

No, it is not sadness. 

Sadness always seems to find it’s way out the door.

Depression, on the other hand, is the door,. 

It remains closed. All the time. 

Shutting out all the love, care, support, friends, and family out of your life. 

Its true purpose is to make you feel hopeless until you make its marks on your wrists

Or die after forcefully indulging pills.

It’s the purpose all along was to come into your life, 

Ruin your life, 

Then take your life. 

It makes you suffer for a long time. 

Because something it opens its door to let in a little love. 

Just a little. 

Then it banishes the happiness and love and locks its door. 

You don’t know it’s a locked door,

So it leaves you with so much hope that love will find its way back, and try to come in through the crack at the bottom of the door. 

So once you find out, you truly realize you are trapped in its circular room of darkness with no corners to be your safe spot. 

You’re left alone in the middle of the room, 

Crying while trying to figure out a way out. 

Trying to remember where it all went wrong.

What you had done. 

But you haven’t done anything. 

It’s not your fault. 

 

She doesn’t feel this way anymore, and wouldn’t wish this feeling on her worst enemy. 

 

“Ghost Writing”

 

God how easy it is to fall in love with someone.

The simplest action yet worst mistake. 

I can’t come to tell you why we fall in love exactly- I’m not a brain doctor, but what I can tell you is that love is what makes humans stay human. 

Love is a feeling towards someone that does good for you. No matter who they are, parents, friends, siblings, lovers, they have to care for you in order to love you. 

The person who you look for in a crowded room is the person who I’d associate with my lover. 

The person who you want a hug from is your family. 

The person who you want to fall into their arms and just cry and talk to, for me, is you. 

You’re the person I looked for in crowded hallways. 

The person I wanted and still want hugs from.

The person who never fails to put a smile on my face. 

The person I could picture a future with. 

Same feelings, different people. 

“The Scream”

 

The voices in my head don’t stop. 

They keep overpowering my thoughts.

They remain in my head all throughout the day. Everyday.

I wish there was some way I could stop them. 

The people around me don’t hear them.

The way they screech harshly against my ear, demanding to be heard, demanding to be felt.

Demanding. 

That’s what they are. 

These voices don’t stop.

They don’t give me a moment of silence ever. 

They only cause me to overthink at night. 

They make me hear things I shouldn’t be hearing,

Feel things I shouldn’t be feeling,

Think things I shouldn’t be thinking. 

The voices never stopped, but they are positive and help see all the good in life. 

 

“We Are Doomed”

This society is done for. 

It seems like nothing is able to mend the wounds created by people’s words. 

The way we criticize each other for things that aren’t in our hands to change. 

That no matter the way you look, the…

 

The world will never be nice, and if anything, now more than ever. 

 

Grade 11

 

“Shadows”

From the dark, they sprung out. 

They reappeared in the worst of times. 

When my shoulders were falling to my feet with things to get done. 

When my head was aching from the pain of remembering. 

When the foundations of my life were falling apart, piece by piece,

And when no one was there by my side, 

I needed the idea of you.

Not for you to reappear in my life. 

There was a time, a few months ago, when you forgot about me. 

Did you not remember I was suffering? 

I counted on you to help ease my pain, 

But instead, 

You were the cause of it. 

 

They aren’t in your life anymore for a reason. Accept that and be thankful.

 

“Every Child Leaned Forward”

Literally, anything you tell children, they will believe you. They are so naive it is kind of sad. I wish I could warn them of what their future really holds. The stress of school, family expectations, peer pressure, the need to constantly look successful. 

With growing up comes the worst of things. 

If I were to go up to a group of kids and tell them the harsh reality of this world, they’ll be confused as to why they’ve never heard this, and some might cry. To avoid this, we tell them lies and fantasies of what life is like because it makes every child lean forward since we’re feeding them false stories. 

It is unfair to lie to all these innocent children because when they grow up, they start to wait for a prince charming, coloring books in school, or a million dollars to show up on their doorstep. 

These poor kids enter their teenage years with all these false assumptions of what life is going to be like because the people around them though it would be a good idea to prepare them. 

 

Best of luck to the children suffering from our inability to say the truth. 

 

“Learning Wisdom”

Seeing what other people around me are doing and then reflecting or learning from them is apparently the noblest way to learn wisdom. 

I don’t agree. 

Well the person I might be reflecting would agree, but in society, doing what another person has done either makes you a copy cat or an idiot. 

Imitating the actions and the way people respond to situations is the easiest. 

I agree that it is the easiest, but it could also be the dumbest. 

Going back to our grade 5 analogy, “if someone jumps off a cliff, would you jump after them?” 

If someone is struggling, do not handle your situation in the same way because everyone has their issues. 

 

Don't copy people, you know yourself best and you know how to set limits for yourself. 

 

“The Awakening”

He was becoming himself. 

Finally realized that he is not living for others. 

That his life should revolve around himself. 

That h should not buy shoes or clothes because he was told to or felt he had to. 

That he should be able to walk in the school hallways without people that hate him by his side. 

That his life should revolve around himself. 

 

So should your life. 

 

“I Thought Wrong” 

I thought I was helping you. 

I thought you felt blessed that I was in your life. 

I thought I would be the person you would call if you were in crisis. 

I thought you would have called me if you needed someone to listen to you. 

I thought you cared about me. 

I thought we could always be each other’s shoulders to cry one.

I thought out of the goodness of your heart, that you’d never leave. 

I thought wrong. 

 

Other people’s true intentions are not your fault and have nothing to do with who you are. 

 

“The Audacity”

What is this lie?

This lie that you can be what you want. 

Why – no – how do people have the audacity to say something about another person?

What the reason behind their rude behavior? 

It could be their rough childhood, their bad day, their shitty friends, their shitty marks, but overall, their shitty life. 

It’s a hard pill to swallow – the truth.

What others say about you, regardless, will always seem true to you because it is how you appear to them. 

It’s your joy to shut them out and think, “no, I’m me and you don’t know who that is, I do though.”

 

Say what you want, or don’t, but people never shut their mouth when it comes to you. 

 

Grade 12

 

“Where Your Old Life Ended”

Foundations for the Future Charter Academy is the number one public high school in Alberta. With our students’ percentages and diploma results, our numbers are through the roof. You would expect the students attending this school to be in a fancy building, but what they’re actually learning in is an elementary and junior high attached together by a long hallway. Their building is, in fact, falling apart because it was one that was built post World War 2. The beauty in it is that regardless of the conditions of this building, the students are exemplary at learning. Not to mention teachers in this school who go above and beyond to help their students succeed. There is a stereotype that teachers only teach and don’t care about the students’ understanding, but FFCA breaks that stereotype because all the teachers care about their students’ education as well as their wellbeing. 

 

It is because of them you grow into who you are and decide what you want to be. 

 

“Process of the Beginning of Life”

Start off as a little four-year-old walking into a school building for the first time. You might cry for your mom every day from kg to grade three, but your teacher will restrain you from seeing her until 3o’clock. Mostly, your day consists of songs, colorings, snacks and then nap time. What a tough four years of schooling. Making and losing friends as they tattle on you, stela your pencils, but also trading snacks and playing four squares with. It’s all fun and games until your expected to write and do the math on your own, and know the difference between their, they’re and there. 

The fun few years of your life and now over and you enter the horrors of middle school. Grade six and nine PATs to look forward to, and a little more realization and enlightenment of the world. There is where the people you make friends with will either be with you through high school or will give you a hard time until after high school, more of that to come. 

 

Life would be easier if there weren’t so many expectations and disappointment. 

 

“I Miss You”

I’m sorry that I forgot.

I told myself I never would. 

Memories of that day are flooding my mind, and it hurts more than I want it to. 

I won’t forget the green sticky note I put on the mirror in Aunt Rafaa’s room marking the day it happened. 

Wow, I just write the date of today and that’s nine days of me forgetting how important that day is to me. 

I’m sorry I forgot, 

But I will always remember. 

I love you and I miss you. 

 

The hurt doesn’t go away, you just learn to cope with it. 

 

“Coping”

Feeling under the weather is the time I take to intensely clean a part of the house. 

I will either rip apart my closet, fold laundry, do the dishes, mop the walls, then, after all, that, I take a shower to wash myself of the negative energy that has left me. 

Depending on the weather, I will either cry while in the shower to feel better or walk out feeling refreshed and ready to face the world. 

 

Some things never change. 

“Book Titles”

Imagine being invisible. 

Imagine eating what your heart desires without gaining weight. 

Imagine living your life in a place you want to be in. 

Imagine spending your life with someone you are head over heels for. 

Imagine the way he looks at you. 

Imagine the view out of your house where when you look at it, nothing else matters. 

Imagine a life that wasn’t falling apart. 

 

Don't imagine too much if you're not willing to put in the effort to make your imagination your reality. 

 

“Those Eyes”

Take a good look into those eyes. 

The ones that belong to your beloved.

Though they might not always be the eyes you want to look into.

Say you thought about someone else, and now you’re thinking about how the course of your life could have been completely different.

There isn’t much we can do to control our feelings, we just have them. 

Try explaining the deeper meaning of why you love or hate someone, the true reason why. 

It’s difficult to explain because feelings are just the result of what goes on in your head. 

There really is no way to explain why we feel things that don’t have an answer with psychology. 

 

That’s what inspires an education in psychology, why do we feel the way we do?

 

“Burdens Gone Unspoken” 

Don’t tell me you know how I’m feeling. 

My feelings are unexplainable to myself- how would you get them?

Don’t tell me you know what it’s like to live through the experiences I’m living through. 

My life’s experiences are unique just as yours are, so don’t tell me to do what you’ve done. 

Don’t tell me you know what it’s like to be sad. 

My sadness consists of endless thoughts of things that will never happen, and for that, I am emotionally unstable. 

Don’t tell me you know what it’s like to have someone walk out of your life. 

My mental stability was dependant on you being there for me- you knew that and you still left. 

Don’t tell me you are all alone and no one cares about you. 

My nights consist of silent tears rolling down the side of my face as my ears ring of needing to scream. 

Don’t tell me how to live my life. 

My life is mine to live, so worry about your life while I worry about mine/

 

If they make you feel this way while they’re trying to help, they are not worthy of being in your life. 

 

Three years can change a person, of course, but the change this girl went through was needed, appreciated, and is not over. How can you be on the right path to being happy, and just stop taking that path? You can’t. That’s why Sarah is going to continue to better herself forever and always.

In grade ten, she realized that no one is permanent, that no one will always be there for her. People will turn their backs on you when you need them most and you can’t do anything about that.

In grade 11, she realized that life isn’t about being sad, and there is so much more to be happy and grateful about then there is to cry about. “counting your blessings is impossible, but try counting the bad things in your life, you can count them on your 10 fingers.” She hears that every time things get difficult to deal with. She also learned that there are people out there who want the best for her and that there are people beyond the four walls of her high school, and from her past.

In grade 12, she realized all the good in life. All the stress she’s been put through is known to have an end, and she’s accepted that. There are so many blessings put upon her, so how can she be sad, only care about the toxic people, cry herself to sleep. Well, guess what, she doesn’t anymore.

She can’t imagine what she’d be like if she didn’t grow the way she did because everything was for the better.

Everything she was put through came to an ending where she can, with pride, say that she is happy. 

 

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