I followed a classic child/tween diary journey. A gift of a page a day book or a flower covered notebook branded 'journal' would be given to me by a relative. I would faithfully cram in my routine from morning until getting home from school. Then after a week it would be found shoved in alongside novels in the bookcase. Once in a while guilt would require a 'Sorry I haven't written in so long, but I'm just so busy learning about the water cycle' entry.
Somehow I had absorbed the idea that keeping a diary was a noble thing to do. It was something you were supposed to do. It was of vital importance that all your hours on any given day were accounted for. This was so boring that I managed to overcome my guilt and give up altogether. Until the day before The Party, it was Year 8 or 9, I had found myself invited to the birthday of one of the popular girls, and it was freak out time. (Seriously, you couldn't pay me to be an early teen again.) I jotted down my terror, writing more about my feelings than the details of who, what, when, where. Since then, minus one temporary break up, I've kept a diary fairly consistently.
In my early teens I wrote for my future self and tried to cover any detail that might be relevant to the story. So, it wasn't completely removed from the rigid structure of my earliest writing days. Looking over old entries I do find parts of my life I'd forgotten about. However, it's mostly surveying a bog of sadness, with one foot in, remembering what it was like to be stuck there. (Even £1m wouldn't get me to consider a return trip.)
Like Rosianna, I lied to my diary or rather I lied to myself and put it down on paper. Now I force myself, mostly successfully, to write honestly and scribble down whatever I want to. Every time I read more recent entries I'm surprised by how young I sound. It's a straight to page feelings splurge without any polish. There aren't any planned metaphors or symbols or anything to make the writing itself particularly readable to anyone but me. Ultimately, that's what my diaries are for now. The current me, releasing feelings in a place where there is no one, unless I'm mean to myself, to judge them.
- Ayomide
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