Journalling doesn’t come naturally to me. My notebooks are full of lists of what I need to do to be better. Get up early, exercise, stop biting your nails, focus!!! All that kind of stuff. When I was a child I devoured Anne Frank’s diaries - it was an obsession. I would write Dear Kitty on the new blank pages of all the journals I eventually got rid of when I realised I would write one page of angst, how I was failing and then never write in that notebook again because it was too painful. My room growing up was covered in cut outs from magazines, like a Pinterest board of who I wanted to be. The pressure of writing and writing well is something I have to unlearn- I want to become comfortable just being, letting thoughts flow through me, giving them space to breathe. I want to be a shit writer and make terrible art. This journal entry was painful like every other - the form seems to bring out the melancholic in me - the things I should have done. I didn’t keep a drawing by my dad that I should have, when someone is alive you don’t think about these things. When they die you look for them everywhere, and want to keep everything they ever touched. I still have a spare pair of underpants for him in my drawer that I was going to take to the hospital. A year after he died I forgot they were his and it took an argument with my bf where I tried to convince him that they were his - it wasn’t before I was standing there screaming “I don’t keep ex boyfriends underpants!” to realise. I am typing this on my dad’s old phone. No conclusion, just a journal entry.