Diary

I started writing a serious diary when I was 13. I had somehow come across The Diary of Anne Frank and I was obsessed. I could not get enough of that thing. I read it and reread it. I even got hold of a copy of an enormous, annotated version of it that had sections she had revised placed side-by-side for down-to-the-letter comparison. Oh, I was a fan. The boy I had a crush on at the time became my Peter van Daan. I sought out anything even tangentially related to Anne. I followed leads about her father’s remarriage after the war, read accounts of people who saw her in the concentration camp and the reminiscences of her former schoolfriends, and tried to find out what exactly a Rin Tin Tin film was. I even named my cat after hers.

I kept up the diary-writing habit even after the obsession cooled. I couldn’t talk to my mother, so I talked to my diary. I told that old girl everything. I think, in retrospect, that my father was reading it.

Years later, I unexpectedly started dating my Peter. As soon as our relationship began, I started keeping my diary with renewed enthusiasm. I felt that it was going to last, and besides, I wanted to have something sensational to read on the bus. On my way to meet the man of my dreams, I would read earlier entries about our meetings and overflow with excitement at the prospect of what the day would bring. We went to malls together, explored shops downtown, and ate Wendys’ burgers. We saw movies together, eating bags of sweets. We held hands and had long embraces.

Years passed, we married, and I kept my diary more intermittently. I suppose I was too busy being happy and loved to want to write much. The diaries, however, had over the years amounted to a large volume. Our home was small, we moved often, and I started to worry about someone finding them and reading them. One day – oh how I regret it now – I threw them all out.

The only good thing is that because I wrote so much down, I remember events and feelings of those times more vividly than I would if I had never recorded them. Also, the feelings of that time of my life were so intense that it would not be easy to forget them.

Today, my diary is electronic and partly on this blog, and I still worry about someone (unwanted) reading it. However, I care a lot less than I once did. Everyone has secrets. Everyone thinks bad thoughts. God alone is perfect. I enjoy writing and so I will continue to write.

The diary is one of the greatest forms of writing in the world, to read and to write.

Long live the diary!