The power of angry scribbles

Emotions have been running high for me. Between the stress of college applications, to regular school assignments along with drama with friends and family, I have been struggling with expressing my emotions; especially in a productive way. After one particular night of releasing my frustration in the form of screaming into my pillow, it led me to finding my old journal that I started in 8th grade: during a certain global pandemic. 

Opening up the brown leather bound book served as a time machine: sending me back to a time that was stressful but for other reasons. Although I was already severely sleep deprived, I decided to read through the notebook before turning in for the night. I flipped through pages of things ranging from my old crushes, to deep emotional struggles over things that, in hindsight, seem so minuscule. 

I realized that thinking former struggles of mine as minuscule now makes what I might be dealing with in the moment laughable in another 4 years. Yet my need to relieve some of the feelings I have weighing me down inspired me to hunt down a pen and start to write. My handwriting started off as “nice” as it gets, with me writing about anything that popped into my mind: ignoring spelling and complete sentences. But as I continued with self-reflection, my letters increased in size, their form growing sloppier due to the speed of my hands. Those emotion-led shapes finally let me get everything that’s been eating me alive out of my head. Even though all I did was write out whatever came to mind, I immediately felt better knowing I wasn’t just keeping it all bottled up inside. 

Seeing things from “drink more water” to “remove yourself from social media, it’s bad for your mental health” out in front of me felt so much more attainable than they were as mere thoughts in my head. I felt the instant relief as I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Putting the thoughts in my head on pages in a book, removing them from the confounds of my mind, made me feel less helpless. 

So, if you are reading this and feel overwhelmed with a variety of different things in your life, I encourage you to help them escape from your mind in the form of letters on some paper. Because angry scribbles have as much power as you let them: so why not provide yourself with some relief?