Found a bunch of old journals the other day. Read through most of them, others I just threw out after a few pages. The ones I threw out were mostly out of frustration with that version of myself, or maybe the environment I was in at the time. There was some beautiful stuff in there (I don't know if that sounds presumptuous), but I'm just surprised I could write like that in some of the earlier journals. I also noticed I mostly wrote about negative things, but I don't think I was necessarily more negative than I am now. My guess is I mostly used these journals to work through the negative things in my life, rather than air them out in my everyday life. Even with the skew towards negative entries I could still outline my ups and downs pretty accurately. Very interesting read.
It's definitely an experience to keep a journal. I found my writing to be a lot more truthful. It's definitely a place you can be brutally honest and still consider it healthy because no one is going to read it besides you. In some of my entries I'm a whiny little shit, but I can't be angry with myself because I would have preferred that whining to go on in the pages of a book no one will read rather than in my everyday life.