Last month, I filled up another journal.

This one was another gift from the ex-in-laws, and is the last of that bunch. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have any more felt-covered and lined journals. While I’ve most definitely appreciated them, it feels good to be finishing. There’s a sense of completeness about it, on a whole lot of levels.

This one was given to me the night of my first wedding, at the after party (at which we drank the bar out of Jagermeister), in which to chronicle the honeymoon adventures that were about to be sprung on us. In it was a bookmark made out of the tartan fabric that we’d used for our hand fasting cord. The bookmark had been knotted at the top with a stamped metal disc. The first pages were indeed given over to the original and intended purpose of the book, but after the trip was completed, no more was written about it.

The rest of the journal is filled with the Glass Crown, the Remembrance rewrite, and miscellaneous journalings. I hit some serious writer’s block with the Chapter 2 rewrite, and I really questioned whether I wanted to continue tackling it. The opportunity to write a scene in which a unicorn gored an innocent bystander pushed me through most of that, in the end.

I was worried, when I started writing in this one, that its past purpose and associations would hinder my progress, perhaps by being something I’d be hesitant to write in. Then I left it on the kitchen table over night.  Nicodemus, the cat with a death wish, tipped over one of the kid’s cups, as he is wont to do when they are full of water. By the next morning, when we discovered the mess, the journal was soaked. I let it dry for several days, but by then the damage was done. Water damage, specifically. Bowed covers, wrinkled pages, and a slightly warped binding. Considering the way that I feel about my notebooks, Nikki was intensely apologetic (the cat is hers) and was surprised when I told her that I was happy that it had happened.

It was like a new book! The pages had a different texture, it sat differently when I wrote in it, and the paper even crinkled in a new way. I was no longer writing in the honeymoon journal from my first marriage. I was writing in a journal irrevocably stamped by my new(er) life and family. And by that god damn cat. The pages were no longer monotonous machine-printed exact copies of each other. Every page was different than the one before it and the one that came after.

And now, I lay to rest the journal that was once transformed, transfigured, and a little bit soggy. May it rest in peace.

On my shelf.

Next to my other journals.

Now that it’s dry.