Black & White Composition Books

"Bitterness only eats away from it's container from the inside out"  -Pastor L. Whitfield

When that statement was said I jerked back and thoughts flooded in. It was true. When you are being bitter about something it's hurts you more first and then you try to put the feelings out on others. I couldn't understand how this statement was the pure explanation of people in my life and it had also explained a lot and opened my eyes to reasons why people treated me the way they did and said the things they said. In the end they were hurting ten times more than I was after they'd attacked.

I have been the plate that a lot of people have spilled their hurt and anger on to make themselves feel better which is why I don't think I cry. Bitter people have made me stronger. I have never seen myself as bitter. I have never let anything tear me up so bad that I took that anger out on others.  I found myself always in someone else line of fire because I didn't have the episodes of bitterness they did.

Now, many become bitter because they are harboring feelings of something that they should have either addressed or gotten over, however, they decided not to speak on it and to hold back their reactions. Now I am one that I always thought it was was something people wanted just to fuck with me to get me to break but I would not entertain those situations by giving reaction. I journaled. I journaled like there was no tomorrow. I felt someone pissed me off, picked on me, made me feel worthless, blamed me, cheated me, taunted me ... I JOURNALED. I had exactly 47 black and white composition books over the course of seven years that I held my frustrations and annoyances in.



Never was a happy moment written in any of these journals. I made it to where everything I did not want to carry with me I put into those black and white composition books and I left them there. I didn't write in the journals for anyones entertainment, I never considered turning them into books, I did not hide them either, I felt if someone picked them up and got upset at what was inside that was some anger they would have to deal with on their own; because I dropped my opinion about the situation in the journal and I left it there and  I carried every happy moment with me and thats what I dwelled in.

Before I threw the journals away I wanted to read them and when I'd sat down with my big bag of M&M's I opened the first page and read the first sentence. I closed the book and realized that these would go into the garbage never to be read because that first page was something I had completely forgot about and the first sentence brought all the memories back and I didn't want to journal about reading my journals! They were good things to me and reading them I thought would just turn them into my enemies.

I then realized that if my journals could talk they would only see me as a bitter human being because I only shared with them what I dislike, who I disliked, and why. But I felt that my bitterness was better put onto a journal than onto other people.

Readers. You may not see yourself as bitter but when you get upset about something how do you let that emotion out? Do you journal? Go on the hunt for a victim? Whats your take on bitterness?

SOUND OFF!