On my 11th birthday, I got a diary. I felt grown up. Finally, I was grown up enough to have stories to tell my diary. All my 11 yo secrets. It was light blue, with little yellow stars on it. It had a small lock that I was naive enough to believe would protect my secrets from my older sister or the adults in the house.
Once alone I hid my little diary. I didn't write in it immediately. I thumbed through the pages that smelled of new, exciting secrets that the pages would soon hold. As I looked at the pages, I wondered just what my teenage future would hold and what I would put down on those white pages, fitting my story on those delicate, little yellow lines. Would I write about only the happy events? Or would I write about just the sad? I was trying to make up rules for my diary, when I finally decided that my diary would have no rules. Anything and everything could be written down. I promised my 11 yo self that I'd write every day and I'd express my true emotions. No lies could be written in the diary.
Page 1: Dear Diary - I would write. No. That didn't feel right. I sat back on my bed with my legs crossed underneath me, chewing on the end of the pen, and scratch that out. "That sounds so childish", I thought. Dear.... who then? Me? God? Finally, my first entry was about why I wasn't addressing my thoughts, hopes, dreams, secrets, etc to anyone. It dawned on me at a young age that this book, this treasure trove of thoughts was for no one but me. (Side note: I did eventually start writing Dear Diary because of a Judy Bloom book I read in which the main character did, so I did.)
As I became a teenager, my journal became more about boys. Oh so many boys that I had crushes on. The journal would hold the saddest of stories how all those crushes looked toward other girls. I'd write about what was wrong with me. I wasn't pretty enough. I was too shy. I wasn't skinny enough. I wasn't rich. I wasn't [Enter some popular girl's name here]. I just wasn't what the boys wanted. It was sad. And heartbreaking in so many ways.
But there were the good times too. The time Tommy Bennet asked me to couples skate. And how in the dark with REO Speedwagon belting out a ballad he maneuvered me to the dark corner and kissed me. Oh gosh, how I gushed about that night. Of course the following entries were about some girl in Jr. High who wanted to "kick my ass" because I was seen with her boyfriend. Oh the drama.
I survived Tommy Bennet and the so-called girlfriend who wanted to kick my butt.
As I boarded a plane to boarding school, my journal was about, yet again, leaving everything I knew and loved behind. My life was riddled with leaving friends behind. And to a 17 YO girl that was just disastrous. I knew I was doing the right thing, and was excited for the adventure, but how could I leave everyone behind again. I wrote in my journal about a timeframe I knew all too well. Just how long would it be before my friends back home stopped writing me.
Life at TASIS was full of things to write about. Only one or two boy crushes, but the girl drama was epic. You put teenage girls in a dorm together with a dorm mother who didn't really care and wow, the drama that would unfold. My Junior year was the first time someone who shouldn't have read my journal did. It ended a friendship, which was probably for the best.
Those journals included all my travels, where I went, what we saw, who was with me, how I got my purse stolen in Venice, how my friend Claudia got us out of bind on the Almafi Coast because she spoke Italian, the first time I tried gnooki, traveling in and out of Saudi Arabia, my first time seeing the statue David, experiencing the holocaust at Dachau, and of course dealing with my friends being scattered throughout the world after graduation.
College years journals were much of the same minus the European adventures. Boys, studying, drinking, boys, not studying, drinking, Blueberry, drinking, no money, boys, etc. The college years journals aren't nearly as full of drama as previous journals. In fact, I had only one journal for all 4 years. I just didn't write as much in it as previous periods in my life.
Through the adult years my journal would become somewhat of a "finding one's self" book. Especially the 20's where you spend your entire time trying to figure out who you are, and what you believe in. I wouldn't write entries as much as just thoughts. Epiphanies that would come to me while driving, or sitting in a meeting, or out with friends. Sure there were still the occasional story of meeting a boy, liking a boy and the boy liking Blueberry. But by and large it was about me and what I wanted to be.
Then in 2005 that journal became a blog. And while I don't write all my deep dark secrets in this blog, I do put more out here than some think I should. All those deep dark secrets, the "work in progress" book stays at home. Hidden away from anyone who might find it.
Now I write on the computer. I hardly actually "write" much anymore, I find actually writing takes too long and the brilliant thoughts are gone by the time I have the first couple of words written. And the hand cramps...yikes. I've started using OneNote for all my writing. In fact, OneNote on my home computer now contains all my photography notes/journaling, all my cooking notes/journaling, all my financial notes/journaling and now all my personal journals. I've discovered I love it. I love sitting down at home, taking 15-20 minutes at night to just decompress and write about what's going on. And more importantly, what's really going on.
Why do I write? Well, why does anyone? For me it gives me a chance to get all those thoughts out of my head and written down. I find I can settle down a lot better at night by getting them out. Turns out they're useful for soul searching too. Once you've written the same thing for 30+ years you can determine that you are, in fact, a procrastinator....for example.
I'm glad I write. I'm glad that I got that first diary way back when. I'm glad I've saved most of them. I'm glad that I can now write and share my stories to the world - whether anyone is reading them or not is another story - one in which I may write about one day.
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