I was having trouble sleeping last night despite feeling extremely tired and sick. I decided to read through my own journal to pass the time. I am not the type who writes in a journal everyday - my writing is more therapeutic I think.
Yesterday as I was reading it, I was quite shocked at just how much I have changed as a person. I was reading my journal entries from my time in Sweden and some of the things I had written in there made me feel like I was reading someone else's story - not mine! While my writing style in itself hasn't changed that much - I always write the way I talk, the way I view the world certainly has.
I was only 18 when I went to Sweden, and now when I think about it, I think how brave I was to do such a thing! At the time, I wasn't at all scared about things like living on my own, having to make friends, having to cook for myself or any of that. All I could think about at that time was "I have to leave this place now or I will go crazy". In one of my own entries I was talking about having to come back to "normal life" here in Australia and I was so afraid of how I would cope with all the different things that I was going through at that time. I always knew that Sweden would just be a way of pausing everything here and I hoped that my time away will help me see things more clearly.
For a very long time, I was ashamed of myself for, ironically - the cowardice in physically running away from all the things that were bothering me. Rather than thinking things through and sorting things, I felt like I had taken the easier option of simply hoping that if I left things to be for as long as they needed and for as long as I could afford, they will sort themselves out.
I now know (and probably deep down inside, I knew then) that no problem will sort itself out - but there is nothing wrong in buying time to reflect and act accordingly. Time doesn't heal any wounds - that is the biggest lie I have ever been told. I have come to learn that I will not feel differently about something just because a lot of time has passed. However, with time you can gather the strength and courage to either deal with the situation or - yourself, and I think they are the only two solutions to anything.
This is what most of my journal entries look like - perhaps they are a little less cryptic though!
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