I was going through some of the boxes stored in our garage this afternoon and look what I found—some old diaries and Pandora’s Box, a box of old letters received from friends, family, and significant others from so many years ago.
I read a couple of my diary entries from childhood and chuckled at the observations, insights, and nonsense. Aside from the crude spelling and English (I came to the U.S. from the Philippines at age ten and English was my second language), I was impressed by the sheer honesty and depth of my younger self.
April 2, 1986, 8:30 p.m.
Dear Diary,
The boy have a crush on, the boy next door din’t even talk to me. I made myself pretty for two days, & none. I guess they just come when you don’t expect them. I really think he’s cute. Since the first time I saw him, I thought he was cute.
I still have crush on Fox. But I’m afraid it’s running out. I hardly watch Family Ties. I wish my love for him won’t pour down the drain.
I love the boy next door. Well, I think he just want to be good friends, not girl/boy friends??? I am in love, but what could I do?
Desperate,
Rina =(
Really deep stuff. Seriously, though, writing in my diaries was something that I looked forward to. It was at once my friend and loyal confidant who accepted everything that I wrote, without argument and without conditions. In many ways, I think it kept me sane.
As I got older, however, writing in diaries became more difficult. I guess it’s because I felt inhibited, fearful that someone might accidentally find it and read it and god forbid, actually know how I really felt about someone, about something somewhere! I have a dozen or so diaries that have only a couple of entries, years apart from each other. The funny thing is that each entry starts with: “Dear Diary, it’s been years since my last post.”
It’s been years since I kept a diary. Perhaps that explains why I’ve become so neurotic!
