The random journal I picked was from 2011 - a very bad year, My daughter was having a long breakdown caused by taking bad birth control pills (look up "Yaz side effects" or Yaz lawsuits").
I was writing in my journal about how I met her father when I was doing a lot of campus radio work years earlier:
And the truth of that statement was so painful that I married him.
Midway through another marriage, I am that person again, 30 years later, vulnerable to meeting another speaker of that line.
This journal also contains this dream:
I dreamed I gave birth to a baby, but due to some space interference, it turned out to be an alien baby. It had shiny large alien eyes and looked podlike. It's mouth seemed to be a screen. I wrapped it in a blanket and was trying to nurse it. I was worried about its intake and output, but eventually I noticed a wet spot on the blanket and was relieved.
It began copying messages from t-shirts and reprinting them on its screen.
It was very smart, but didn't seem gendered.
At one day of age, it was reading and writing.
I left it somewhere, but when I realized that it wasn't with me, I wasn't worried because it couldn't walk yet. I figured it wouldn't move.
I was right and I found it where I left it.
I was proudly carrying it around.
I loved my alien baby.
Dudes, pull out an old journal - copy me something. _refugee_
My only journal is from when I was 14. I am sure that it will be painful.
I'll root it out, but it might take a day or two.