Analysis Of What I Want Right Now By Joan Didion

“I really just want to hold your hand. I want to sleep on your shoulder and think about how I could do that forever. I want your arms around me and my hands in your hair. I want so much that I don’t know what I want. One fact is for sure: I want you, and I want to be happy. I just wish there was a way to have both.” This comes from a private blog post entitled What I Want Right Now by the confused 11th grade version of myself. It was March 2015 and I was over three months deep into my first serious relationship. It took an intervention from trusted friends for me to realize just how unhealthy of a relationship I was in. The day after writing this post I felt strong enough to put an end to the relationship. Writing down everything I wanted in that moment painted a clear picture of the state I was in for any future readers including myself. Looking back at this old post managed to trigger emotions that I had not felt since the time that I wrote it. The central argument of On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion is one about reconnection and reconciliation with her past self. Her strong values of self-awareness and staying connected to her past were reasons for her keeping a notebook. “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” (CITE) While only being 18, I already know how true this statement is. At this moment, I have grown apart from many stages of my life that I had failed to document. The …show more content…
She explains how keeping a notebook was her way of reconnecting with her past self and making amends with it. In my experience of keeping a blog with similar notebook-style entries, I find Didion’s arguments