Looking though the contents of this journal just now, I actually had the desire to burn it to ash in the kitchen sink. I envisioned people reading it after I die. I don’t think I would ever want it to be in anybody else’s hands but mine. Not even you, Internet. The things I wrote in here are painful to read. And I don’t mean like, the memories are too sad. I mean because the stuff I wrote is just awful. I can’t even look at it. I was thirteen. This is the first journal I got after moving upstate (I actually did burn all the diaries I had prior, in the field behind our new house, not too long after we’d moved. From adolescent embarrassment of childhood. I am still forlorn I did that). In this journal, I start out as a lonely new girl, talking to myself, before I had made any friends. I end the book as a girl, mixed in with the wrong crowd, wanting to kill my parents, burn down the town and die young. And as every page in between gets scarier and scarier, I wonder two things — have I really gotten better over the years, or does this just mean I’ve been crazy for longer than I thought?
I hate this journal.
(my name has been blurred out of photo at bottom)
