I found a diary, of mine, from ninth grade. Yes, it was kicking around under a bed at my mother's house. (Yes, the house is still on the market. Yes, it is still full of stuff. Yes, it is rather a poignant headache.)
The diary - an inane piece of gobbledygook - was a school assignment, for an English class. It's full of teachers, dreams, grades, boys, sleepovers, band, dances, "I got a desk chair, yellow" for Christmas. My handwriting changes on every page, the ink color changes almost more frequently, and the diary is called Katherine, Kitty, Kati, You, and Kathy. (Yes, my middle name is Catherine.)
In the margins, occasionally, there are notes from the English teacher. Apparently we had to hand it in - to what end, I cannot fathom. It seems like it might have been more appropriate to a psychology teacher or guidance counselor, because it's not creative writing, it's the mundane ramblings of a thirteen year old (a thirteen year old who was not smoking cigarettes or hanging out in cemeteries).
I did, though, like this passage:
Sometimes thoughts
just run [in] my head.
And there's so many
I can't write them
all down. Oh well, too bad.
Funny how not much has changed - today, instead of a diary for Miss Dissin, I'm writing here. And all day long, posts write themselves in my head - walking down the street, waiting for the train, watching the bread rise - and there are so many that I can't write them all down.
I think my grammar is usually better though.
18 comments:
i have my diary from the 9th grade too...funny stuff. Gah!
Our younger selves are such entertaining strangers...but there is always a little something recognizable there, too.
love this one
Oh god - when I come across my old diaries I hide my face and make the sign of the cross. The cheesiness...the narcissism...the horror...
How true! And how well I remember those days of changing ink and changing handwriting. I still love ink colors, actually.
I think you seem very not crazy. When I read my diaries from that age when I was in college I was like 'damn that girl was crazy.'
Then I threw them all away, which I regret.
I ran across some of mine too. I wasn't crazy. I was just plain stupid. I hope they stay burnt.
I love this.
Also, your handwriting! Are you left-handed?
This makes me smile.
(And like you, I also am frequently blogging in my head when I am doing other things. As an academic, I should really be doing things like designing experiments and working out new analyses in my head when I'm driving around or doing laundry, but instead I find my head blogging...) (Also, I have my diaries from about age 17 through 20. When I looked back at them a few years ago, thinking they would be entertaining, I only felt pained by them. I took myself so darned seriously. I also mostly just complained. Very annoying to read...)
I recently went through my old notebooks and cringed. I had to throw a few away, they were so bad. What a fun gem to find! I have a notebook I carry around trying to capture all those thoughts running in my head and I STILL can't write them all down.
That's so funny about the handwriting--I remember working so hard to decide in which direction I would slant my writing. In the end, I went conventional.
But Santa slants the opposite way.
Funny how "the same" we stay. When we watch old videos, I hear the video echo me ... because I find myself saying the same things, laughing the same way, in the same places ... as I did back then.
There's something gratifying and unnverving about those old diaries. A few years ago, I spent some hours leafing through mine--I was reminded of so much...yet I was also rather mortified...and ever so glad I'm not completely that girl any more.
Well noted, though, that your blog is The New Kitty.
And here I am, Miss Dissin. Honestly, I'm not sure why we collected and commented on your journals, but I think it means we cared. Love your blog. I had Mrs. Gordon too! Wasn't she great.
i have kept my middle and high school journals, which my all means SHOULD be burnt to a crisp, in the hope that someday I will read them and have some sympathy for my daughter at that age. But maybe I should just burn them.
i like the idea that thoughts RUN your head, not "in" your head. ;)
The only old journal I have is written in French. Mon dieu!
I kept handwritten journals from the time I was 11 until I was about 40. I still have some I write in, but not the way I did before. One summer I went back and re-read the early ones, and marveled at how much I had changed and how I had stayed the same.
I had the painful pleasure to read through many of my childhood diaries while I was cleaning out my mother's house. They were charmingly banal, yet with little glimpses of the real feelings, the ones that represent who I was to become. I laughed at myself at each page, and then, with courage I hadn't had before, put them in the big garbage bag and let them go. (Okay, maybe I kept one.)
I love how you found that part of you, visible, peeking out between the childlike details, that one poignant phrase that helps you recognize your most original self.
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