Friday, 10-2-87 6:03 p.m.
Dear Diary,
At this moment I'm talking to my best friend Danet and writing at the same time. Isn't that amazing?
That's the first entry in my first diary. My seventh grade self was easily amazed, I think. But so began my first journal, and I've been journaling ever since. Truthfully, I don't do it as often as I used to. Dear God, my high school self was a JOURNALING MACHINE. And the ANGST. THE ANGST. Reading it now, it's all so maudlin and depressing.
Full disclosure: I lean into angst. I'm still an angsty person. Me and angst? Total BFFs.
Every couple of years or so, I dig into the box of journals, and try to remember the girl I was. It's always a little thrilling when I find I've written a note to myself, usually along the lines of, "If you have a husband, go kiss him now," which I do, because one shouldn't ever argue with one's loony, adolescent self. This morning, I came across this musing: "Maybe someday I'll be a published writer. Yeah right." I found, too, prayers I'd write down in my middle school journal to the Virgin Mary, signing them off with "Your Friend Forever." These were mostly aimed at wishing my family and friends all sorts of blessings, and in a postscript, I'd ask to gain some weight, and for democracy in Cuba--odd bedfellows, those two requests.
Full disclosure: I was a weird kid. I'm not sure anyone in my family fully realized how very weird I was.
It's illuminating, reconnecting with a past self. I can see the architecture of my life, the supports that went bad, the lasting strength other moments built for me. The turns of fate are there, too, on pages endlessly riddled with questions: Should I go to graduate school? I just met this girl named Diane. This boy in my Creative Writing class is so cute, PLUS he likes "The Simpsons"!!!. Stuff like that. And I wonder about the way a thousand tiny decisions impact our lives meteorically, without us ever noticing.
Mostly, though, reading my old journals fills me with a singular impulse--the desire to go back in time, and give that skinny, terrified kid a big hug (though she'd probably yell out something infinitely dorky, like "Stranger danger!" and peel out of the room). And I think about forty year old me, or fifty, sixty, seventy year old me (if I should be so lucky) wishing for that, too.
I found this Tallulah Bankhead quote: “It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.” Wholly apt. And since I want to grow up to be a really badass seventy year old, I'm guessing this journaling thing won't last. I'll be too busy doing bad girl stuff at the old lady home, having escaped the tyranny of keeping a diary at last.
How about you out there? Anyone keep a journal? A diary? Is your blog your diary? Do you tweet your angst instead? I really want to know, actually, so I can write about you in my journal:)
P.S. Yes, that is a picture of Christian Slater on the cover of my tenth grade journal up there. Ah, Pump Up the Volume, how you inspired me...
