My pink and black, gold fringe is more than just a journal from of the shelf at my local TJ Maxx.

It is full of quotes, lists, prompts, story ideas, thoughts, and me. There is more to me than what you see on the outside. The under five-foot girl, her face covered with freckles and constantly dying her hair whenever she feels too comfortable. I'm more than my tattoos on my pale skin, and I'm more than the bubbly girl you see while walking across campus.

I have been filling up journals since I was in middle school. I think middle school and college were the seven years where I filled multiple journals a year. When college came around I didn't "have time" to write a single page in a journal. I had a journal on the edge of my desk and it just sat there. It wasn't full of memories, or heartbreak. I was holding it all in and it was causing my chest collapse and tears to roll down my cheeks when it became too much.

2018 has been a year that has been full of heartbreak that has left me sick to my stomach constantly, love that makes me melt whenever someone mentions my boyfriend's name, and struggle as I go through my senior year post surgery, needing another surgery close to finals, and hoping to graduate in 2019.

Yet with everything going on I didn't pick up a journal once.

Maybe I was afraid of the girl I was, or maybe I was scared to see the amazing girl I was becoming. The girl who is head over heels in love with a good boy, I finally found one. A girl who is becoming comfortable in her own skin even after gaining weight from surgeries. A girl who is ready to graduate college and tackle on the next chapter in her life. Why would I not want to see that?

I am not the girl I thought I would be when I was thirteen years old. My journal then was full of dark poetry, talking about self-harm, and how depressed I was but no one realized it until high school. Now, at 22 I am a girl who has been clean for four years and is on meds, that helps a ton with my depression. I am taking life by the reigns and even on bad days, I have coping skills. When I think the world is ending and I can't carry on, I remind myself of the life I have now. I have friends who care, I have a boy who supports me through every up and down, and I have a bright future.

I'm going to school for what I love, and honestly, it's work documenting.

Callaghan Carter

Last week I picked up a journal while I was home and I have only filled seven pages, with four quotes and three prompt entries based on self-discovery. Right now, I am finding guidance by my grandmother, who always told me to keep writing. Yes, I'm a creative writing minor, and yes I write for Odyssey. Yet writing in a journal is different. Journaling is almost harder for me personally as a writer. I document the good and the bad, quotes to lift me up or quotes that I needed on a hard day.

I really encourage people who don't journal once a day to buy a cheap notebook, it doesn't even have to be a fancy journal, and just write. I find prompts on Pinterest for days I don't know what to write about or have nothing to get off my chest. In just eight days I have felt this lightness to me, and it's not just from the extra sleep.

Journaling is beneficial and worth the time.

Journaling is the perfect thing to do before bed. Write down your day, thoughts, lists to do etc., and then go to bed with an empty head. It's been helping my anxiety before bed and helping me fall asleep better. It only takes up to ten minutes and it is worth it, I promise.