Please burn my journals

a record of my wishes

“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”

These were the first words Anne Frank wrote in the diary gifted to her for her 13th birthday.

So many of us have read her diary - either as part of a school project, or out of interest. To understand the inner life of a girl in hiding. The contents are both heartwarming and horrific. The ordinariness of it all (her fights with her mum, her crushes), you'd think you were reading your own diary at that age…until you remember she wasn't living the life of an ordinary 13 year old.

Whilst it’s an important book - one I’d say is necessary to read - why does reading it feel like an invasion? It’s the same feeling I have when reading Woolf’s diary entries or Sontag’s.

from Pinterest

I journal - every night. I have done for decades. I don’t write for an audience and I don’t read them back. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I keep all of those entries. All of the words that I poured out of my head onto a page.

Why?

It's not some ridiculous fantasy that one day, people will want to read my innermost thoughts. It’s not so that I can meet past versions of myself, as Sontag did. To be honest, I don’t really know why I keep them. It just feels like a kind of betrayal to all those hours spent writing to just then throw that in the bin (after shredding of course).

And then there’s the fear that one day, after I’m gone, my husband - or perhaps worse - my mates may read them. Judge me from among the living whilst I’m off somewhere else. I’d like to think that they’d do me the favour of burning them instead. No-one needs to read my incoherent thoughts. Including me.

So why do I keep them?

I was thinking about this the other day when one of you told me about the American Diary Project during one of our book club chats. An organisation that gathers up the journals people hand over willingly and puts them online for anyone to read. They want to keep the record of ordinary lives.

I like the idea - it lets you into the interior of a stranger in a way fiction can't and perhaps, in a more democratic way, it also allows for a diversity of voices that history normally smooths out.

But there’s a difference here. Those people sharing those diaries know that their writing will be read by others.

For me, that’s sort of the same thing as posting online. Instagram, we know, is our highlight reel. No matter how many crying-in-the-car videos tell us otherwise, it's all still a performance. The snot seeping out of our nose and the rambling incoherent thoughts are all edited out.

Are you telling me that people are willingly sharing their unedited rambling pages?

I don’t buy it.

My journal is the antithesis of my social media “presence”. It’s the one place where there is no judgement and no need to self-edit. It doesn’t matter that my hair is a mess, or the ink splurges, or (in reality) I’ve written three pages of words without saying a lot. It is, in fact, my un-highlight reel.

Why would I want to share that with anyone? When people are so willing to judge me for the contents of my handbag can you imagine what they’d say about what I tell my journal?

Let’s spare a moment for the diarists who didn’t know that their entries would be shared with the world, for centuries. For the Woolf’s out there - would they have felt the same as me? Would they be pis*ed that their innermost feelings, the ones they chose not to publish, are out in the world for people to read?

Or would they be more annoyed about what was shared. What was decided (by their most loved ones, might I add) would make the cut. I don’t know what I’d be angry at more. The fact that someone shared my journals or the fact that they edited them.

Reading my 4 June journal entry without the context of the entirety of a particular week in February would make no sense. You’d think I was a raving lunatic (more so than if you read my journals chronologically).

Frank’s diary was edited by her father, Sontag’s son edited her diaries before publication, don’t get me started on what Hughes decided to publish or destroy or hide of Plath’s works.

Is editing what gets shared the real invasion more than the sharing itself?

I’m not sure.

And who decided that the people closest to us should be the ones to choose what does get disclosed? As if they know the real version of us more than a stranger?

Yes, of course my husband knows me better than anyone - but does he know the real me?

Do I?

Isn't that what journaling is, in the end: trying to work out what's actually bothering you, what actually matters, at the moment you're writing it? And if I'm still digging for that myself, then the realest part of me is hidden even from me. Never mind him. Never mind a stranger.

So is it just a form of respect to the diarist, by the publisher, to allow their ‘nearest and dearest’ to edit out anything unflattering? Or does it serve as a way for others to flatter themselves by editing out the parts of you that don’t fit with their image?

Again…no idea.

But what I will say is this - and not because I think my journals have anywhere near the literary interest as Woolf’s or Sontag’s but mainly for my own peace of mind - please, when I’m gone, burn my journals.