Dear Diary, I'm Sorry...
July 31, 2017
Dear Diary,
I’d like to apologize to you. Yes, I’ve apologized many times before for my largely gapped and spread out entries, those once-or-twice-a-month, hand-written status updates that cover an entire month and begin with me writing the phrase “I’m sorry”. My entries have been scarce and my commitment to you hasn’t been consistent, but that’s not what I’m apologizing for. I’m done apologizing for that. This time, I’m sorry for growing up.
I remember when I first started writing in you. I wrote my first entry after my first day of high school. It was a rough start to a rough four years and a journal was exactly what I needed to survive. Between the inevitable coming-of-age drama, vicious cycle of high-school-Darwinism, and the confusing emotions that come with being alive, I needed you. I wrote in you every day. Some days, when life was especially hard, I’d write in you two or three times. I’d write just to keep myself going, just to stay as strong as I could. I’d write in you to keep myself from falling apart.
When I look at all the diaries and notebooks I’ve filled up, I realize how much I used to write when I was a teenager. I wrote poems for the feelings that were too hard for me to explain and I wrote journal entries for those feelings that were begging to be written in their own explicit loudness. I did not know this at the time, but everything I was writing—every angst-filled syllable and every emotionally-charged period—was preparing me for writer-hood.
As I left my teenage years behind to begin my next adventure away from my hometown, something keep me from writing in you as often as I once had. Maybe it was my new friends and social life. Maybe it was the new stresses of college. Maybe it was me having less time and more responsibilities. Or, more likely, it is because I am not the same girl who used to write in your pages years ago.
Our relationship has strained along the way and I know that it is my fault.
You used to know everything about me. All of my thoughts and feelings were yours to know. But as I wrote in you less and less, all those interior words and emotions filtered their way into other mediums. Unfortunately, these newer mediums are less private. They are fictions and non-fictions. They are spoken-word. They are paintings and inky portraits. I read them aloud. I let people read and view my work. I open myself up to others’ commentary and criticism. The things I make and the pieces I write are not just for you and me anymore; I am not as alone as I once was.
For this creative, personal, but ultimately necessary growth, I am sorry.
I’m sorry for leaving you alone and treating you like a one-night-stand. I liked what we once had, but time and the unpredictable creative wind pulled me in a different direction. I liked writing in your pages, leaving my mark inside you. I want you to stay in my life. But for you to stay, we have to move in a different direction. We have to move along and change with that unpredictable wind. We’ll never have what we once had, but maybe, my dear Diary, we can write something new together.
Your old friend,
Alyssa
