If my house were, God forbid, to burn down, and I was the only person inside, there’s no question what I would grab first. Not my jewelry, or the old magazines I collect, or even my wedding pictures. It would be the dog-eared set of journals next to my dresser, where for the last 20 years I’ve inscribed my life.
Though these diaries span 20 years, the truth is, I was never good at keeping a regular journal. Instead, I wrote in fits and starts, a few weeks or months at a time, leaving these intermittent glimpses of a time I’d otherwise forget. Over the years, the cycle remained constant: I’d get a new journal or notebook and be excited to write … for a week, three weeks, two months. Then, eventually, I’d get too caught up in whatever passed for important at age 12, 15, 18, returning only when some high school heartbreak or a brand new journal inspired me.
The first diary I ever kept was a present from my parents for Christmas 1986, when I was 11. Reading it now, the entries are sweet, even funny: I complained when football preempted the Cosby Show, chronicled every time I saw the boy I liked (in my bowling league!), and proudly announced the arrival of my first period, on Easter Day. Even though I – still – barely feel like an adult, it’s impossible to believe I was I was ever that young.
Or sad. One thing that always strikes me when I re-read my past diaries is seeing how crushingly insecure I was, or how deeply I longed for a boyfriend. However small my teenage problems now appear, back then they seemed all the world, and it’s so poignant to see my teenage self so struggle.
But part of the trip through my old diaries is also seeing me grow up and gain confidence: how I got over the world-ending pain of my 9th- grade boyfriend cheating on me with my best friend; how I longed to escape my high school and ended up in the college of my dreams; how I survived the pressures of college academics and track to find a place there, and how, devastated by having my heart broken in l aw school, I met the man I would marry.
It was only when I got to college, though, that I realized why I kept a diary on and off all those years. For this history major, fascinated by old things, devoted to saving pictures, pressed flowers, and all manner of mementos, keeping a diary was my way to preserving my life, so I (and maybe my imagined future daughter) could meet the girl I’d been and perhaps understand her.
My impulse to chronicle found its perfect information-age outlet when I started an online journal, first at WC and then at Livejournal. It’s meant so much, over the past five years, to have been able to share the last five years with the amazing women I’ve met online – both the happy parts (our wedding), and the sad (living through September 11th).
But most of all, I appreciate journaling- whether online or on paper, for what it’s given me:
My life, captured. I can think of no greater gift.
-kris97
What an amazing gift you have given yourself and your daughter. I’m jealous.