I've been keeping a diary pretty consistently since 2004. One of the sub-editors at my first job encouraged me to do it because, he said, I would regret it if I wasn't able to look back.
There's nothing particularly worth reading in these diaries, to be honest. It's mostly promises of new leaves and angst about being a failure. I never, ever, reread what I've written. I can't bring myself to turn the pages back to see what I was committing to paper two years ago. I don't want to destroy them though.
And more and more I can't bring myself to commit things to paper. I have my latest diary open to a page, and I scribble a date, and sit with a thousand thoughts waiting to be written. But I can't get them down.
I think that writing things down will make them real, and there are things I long for, or am denying, or am afraid of, that I don't want to be real quite yet, so I don't have to face up to them.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, about writing things down feeling like it makes them real.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes use this as a kind of intermediary step: http://thequietplaceproject.com/thethoughtsroom/ It's a website where you can write out your thoughts, but then the script melts away. (Have to admit, the first time I used it, it left me sobbing; it drew things out of me that I don't think I could have written down in any permanent way.)