What You Know Changes - Cheryl Strayed's Dear Sugar

Lately I’ve been transcribing my journals. There are 25 of them and they span from May 1, 1988, when I was 19 years old, to January 23, 2010—which happens to be the day I finished writing the first full draft of Wild—when I was 41. I decided to begin this transcription project several months ago when I sought out one of my journals to do a fact check for an essay I was writing, but after I found what I’d sought, I didn’t put the journal down. Instead, I sat on the floor of my office and read the whole thing, feeling a swirl of shame, pride, regret, sorrow, bewilderment, amusement, longing, wonder, fear, mortification, and gratitude as I turned the pages. I felt rattled and kind of sick for the rest of the day, as if I’d been visited by a phantom who both buoyed and scared the bejesus out of me. And the weirdest thing of all is that phantom was me! Did I even know her anymore? Where did the woman who’d written those words go? How did she become me? I began my transcription project the n

Lately I’ve been transcribing my journals. There are 25 of them and they span from May 1, 1988, when I was 19 years old, to January 23, 2010—which happens to be the day I finished writing the first full draft of Wild—when I was 41. I decided to begin this transcription project several months ago when I sought out one of my journals to do a fact check for an essay I was writing, but after I found what I’d sought, I didn’t put the journal down. Instead, I sat on the floor of my office and read the whole thing, feeling a swirl of shame, pride, regret, sorrow, bewilderment, amusement, longing, won