the significance

"What is the significance of this writing? Shouldn't I be spending time working on something that can impact people's lives? Do I even plan on ever publishing anything I write? And what about that literature scholarship I found last night? It said to write something that will make a difference, be positive, help society. How is this worthless journal doing that? And is calling it "worthless" a betrayal to myself and my own feelings? Shouldn't I be writing about violence and suicide and pain and awareness like all the other motherfuckers out there making a difference? Doesn't anyone see that everybody's writing about the same shit, and something that's ordinary, like this or like Ayreon, is dubbed and deemed inconsequential? This is my life. And sure, I've faced shit in the past, but what angers me more than that pain is the fact that society has made me feel obligated to write about only that for the rest of my life. That day-to-day life can't make a difference. Well, guess what: day-to-day life is what everyone lives, and if that can't make a difference, then nothing in this world will ever matter, and nothing in this life can ever change. Now, I know that's not true; writing itself has helped make the importance of daily life, the importance of the connections made and the times experienced, tangible. Reading through Ayreon, you can see as I change over the short span of fifty days. Not everything important is major. Not everything major is important. What is important is discovering what matters in your own life. And the day-to-day routine is important to me now. I don't want to spend the rest of my life dwelling in the hardships of my past just because pain sells and society is constantly trying to "raise awareness"; I want to live and grow and move on and show that it's possible to come out of trauma more mentally well than you were when you went in, that it's possible to move past all that and have a meaningful existence. Right now, I'm just a sixteen-year-old girl sitting on a couch at home, listening to the rain during the summer after her high school graduation. But who is to judge that this moment does not matter? Who can say that this summer is nothing just because nothing huge and sad occured? Daily life changes people, sometimes even more than the great losses or traumas or pain. I went into tenth grade scared, lonely, and cynical, and lord knows, it was daily life that changed me into who I am right now. The things I experienced day-in and day-out gave me perspective to see the good in everyone, the trust to give to others, and the friendships I cherish above all else. And nothing is more important than that. And so, I won't die the girl who had a shitty childhood and adolescence - NO. I will die the woman who lived life and loved and had normal struggles and thought and felt and just kept on growing. No matter how much "awareness" is raised, no growth can come from forever living in the past. It must be recognized, and dealt with, and then moved past. It's part of who we are, not all of who we are."
--Excerpt from Summer Journal 2008, Thursday - 7/24/2008

(A note - for those of you unfamiliar with Ayreon, it was a rant I wrote earlier this year, from 1/28/2008 - 3/17/2008. It turned out to be more than a hundred pages, and it fully chronicled my life for that fifty days. The name comes from a musical artist, Ayreon, whose album The Human Equation heavily influenced the rant.)