Diary

Memory is a terrible thing. It alters and simplifies our recollection, making us heroes of our own lives. We forget our failures. Different occasions merge together and sometimes the timeline of events goes all topsy-turvy as our brain tries to make stories out of singular events.

My first venture into keeping journal wasn't voluntary. I was seven years old and I had problems with learning to write Finnish. I had been out of the country for two years, studying and reading in English (as well as one aged six can). Coming back to homeland and learning to write in language with different grammar proved to be problematic. My mother bought me a calendar book and forced me to write an entry for every day, even though I had very little interest in doing so.

First time I tried writing one voluntarily was when I was ten. I was spending my summer in Nicaragua, and thought that it might be a good idea to record events from a time that would surely be unlike any other in my life. After the first two weeks, the entries started to get shorter. After three weeks, they were just a list of verbs. Soon I stopped completely.
I tried again four years later, for the same reasons as above. The entries were longer, but during the two and half months I only got twenty pages into A5-notebook. I spent weeks without writing anything - though to be fair, the summer was pretty uneventful.

During this time in my life, I was sure that I was already emotionally as adult as I would ever be, and that the memories of those days would never fade. Thus I didn’t keep a diary, a thing I can’t deem as good or bad. The memories did fade, but I suspect that they were nothing in particular I would want to remember. On the other hand, this was the time of my life when I created many of the quirks I now have. Would be nice to know why I originally avowed not to use alcohol or why I disliked a person whose company I three years later looked quite forward to.

I wrote my first long, emotional text when my first relationship crashed. I was feeling awful. For reasons I don’t remember I opened Notepad and started writing. I must have filled two or three pages, and I remember how it surprised me that I couldn’t lie to myself as I did in my head. Half-truths that made sense in my mind looked so thin on paper. I had to tell my feelings and situation as a story, which forced me to question things you normally brush over in your head, as you are more occupied with the present state of affairs.
I wrote for two hours, after which I password-protected the file. I probably have the file still somewhere on my hard drive, but I have not taken a look. While I was more truthful, I have no illusions that I would have been any less naïve.
Reading the file again would also surely hurt, if for different reasons than then. Written word always reflects the ways we think – never more than when we write about our personal problems. I am not sure I want to face the person I was then – even if it would be a moment of growth as a human being.

Last summer I got a book from my mother with hard red covers and full of blank A4-pages. Mum meant me to use it for drawing – I was just finishing my fourth book – but I found the paper was too glossy for that. The ink didn’t stick to the paper needing up to five minutes to dry.
The book rested on my shelf for few months till I found myself depressed by worries of the future, family and matters of heart. I could not separate the feelings in my head, leaving me unable to function. I was in sorry state for few weeks till it occurred for me to take the book down from the shelf and start writing.
This was over half a year ago, and to date I have finished 107 entries. Some of the entries are written very carefully, with every alphabet carefully placed precisely where intended. Some are written hurriedly, with big and half-formed words scrawling over the pages like fat snails. But I kept writing about my experiences, thoughts, worries and hopes, even when I was tired, sick, angry or feeling my heart would burst from grief.

It helps to write things down when you have a problem; just having it on paper changes it to something more akin to to-do list. Matters of heart become solid, making them easy to touch. Often writing it down even offered solutions that were earlier nowhere to be seen.
It helps to write things down even on a normal day; you never know when you want to know of some detail that would otherwise escape your memory, or remind yourself how you felt about different people.
And finally, it stops you from making stories out of your life. Going trough the pages you can see what was important to you then, and how you felt about different subjects. Seeing how things unfolded gives you a change to learn of them more effectively than by just recalling.
Alas, it also offers exellent list of mistakes you make. Where you trusted the wrong people and where you made a mistake that only manifested months later.

But, all in all, I love my diary with red covers. It has probably improved my life more than any other singular item ever in my possession.