A red letter day

Do you keep a diary?

This question is largely to anyone who isn’t a teenage girl, for whom diaries are almost an essential tool of emotional expression or items of blackmail by younger siblings often of the male variety.

For the last ten years I’ve been keeping diaries. The urge to write is so compelling in me that if it’s not a written diary then it’s letters or blogs or thoughts on the computer. There just always seems to be so much to comment on and not enough time to get it all down and tell the world so that they can experience it as well!

When I was unpacking I found 6 full, over 2kg each, diaries and 8 half, to 1/36^th, diaries, full of chatter and nonsense and cartoons and stuff that sometimes makes me wonder if I did drugs without me knowing? I seldom go back to read things I’ve written. I mean to, of course, but somehow everything from chores to staring blankly at the ceiling seems to come in the way. (My room has a very nice ceiling, it gives it a sense of space…)

So after my move, I decided to stop this habit. I had all these diaries full of things that in essence had become null and void. It was an odd sensation to look at these things I’d put all that time and effort and thought and creation into and thinking… “meh”.

So come a few days before New Years I decided, bugger it, let’s get down to some serious destruction! I sat on the bed, diaries on one side, big black garbage bag on the other and proceeded to tear up the old diaries with very satisfying ripping sounds. Even the hamster seemed to find it interesting, sitting in his wheel and probably wondering if he’d get any of it as nesting material. (I didn't give him any, he's too easily corruptible!)

In a way it was sort of fun. I got to see and relive a lot of old, fun memories. Photographs, old movie tickets, photos from Gold Reef City, enthusing about my FIRST EVER TATTOO!! Spewing affection for my ex, my long dead pets or places we used to stay. (And yes, fruit. What? Some things never change!)

Of course it was sad as well. But a good sad, not the ‘it's-slicing-up-my-soul-with-a-blunt-spatula-god-it-hurts’ sort.

It makes you realize how life can change and change so damn fast! (Even when the signs are all there that change is coming, it’s still a shock when it shows up and tells you to move your ass out!) Things like this always make me marvel. It’s so awesome it’s hard to comprehend. Both beautiful and scary somehow.

Oh that’s nifty, I should put that in a diary!

The person I was then, is not the person I am now, and it was hard for the person I am now not to feel a mix of tenderest sympathy, and absolute scorn, for the younger me. I mean holy cheese, if you’d asked me 1, 5, 10 years ago what I saw for my future, this would not have been it. (For starters I thought I’d own more cats…)

But in the end I had a nice pile of recycle-able shredded paper and a deep sense of satisfaction. At that moment I realized I’d probably never keep another written diary again.

So of course I have a brand new one and will just have to write about this irony in it as soon as possible!