I have a trunk full of my journals from high school. (Yes, a literal trunk; it’s a piece of furniture from my grandparents’ house.) Back then, I journaled in bold-colored markers in artist’s sketchpads. I often wrote for hours and hours, chronicling every detail of my life and how I felt about it. Those journals saved my life in high school. They helped me process big feelings about having cancer, fights with friends, and my first romances. I saved them, keeping them stacked in my bookshelf for years, until the trunk became available. But until this week I hadn’t re-read a single one.

It started because of a writing project. I’m hitting pause on my novel for a few weeks while the editor I hired takes a first look, so I decided to work on personal essays. My plan was to read a published essay from a place I’d like to be published myself, then try and write something in a similar style. On the very first day, I chose an excellent essay from Sequestrum in which the writer references letters she’d received from a friend as a young girl. When I finished reading the essay I thought, “Well, I don’t have letters. But I do have journals.”

So I opened the trunk and dove in.

It’s been incredible, reading words from high school me. She’s 21 years younger and has a limited life experience– she hasn’t even traveled internationally yet!– but she still feels like me at her core.

She’s got ambition and tenacity. She loves her friends and wants to show them that she cares about them. She works hard and plays hard. She loves her freedom and appreciates her quiet time. She’s self-reflective and insightful. She’s creative and fun and optimistic.

She’s also foolish. She treats people too lightly sometimes. She cares a lot about what other people think of her, especially her favorite teachers and the general school population. She’s also much more religious than I am. That’s something I grew away from in my twenties. It feels uncomfortable to read her prayers… and almost as uncomfortable to read about her taste in music, which tended toward 90s soft-rock love ballads. (I definitely aged out of that phase!)

I only have a few tentative ideas for essays yet, nothing solid, but I’m enjoying the experience of reading through the journals. I’m so grateful that I kept a record of that part of my life. It’s fascinating to see where it deviates from the memories I hold in my head. There were so many things I’d forgotten but am now able to re-live: the songs I danced to at my junior prom; the time my best friend came to live with us for a week; the pool party when I wore my first bikini.

I’m fairly certain that 17-year-old Leanne wasn’t picturing 38-year-old Leanne reading her journals in 21 years. That’s not something I thought about when I wrote in my journal today (now a file on my laptop). I keep a journal because it helps me process things now, not for the future. But it is a beautiful by-product that I get to live those moments all over again.