An article by Isabelle H Tang
There are many bad, bad things to come out of diarising your life since 2011. My psychologist and many self-help articles have seemed to encourage me to keep a journal and I guess at some degree it does have its benefits. Writing every single useless thing that happened to me or that I think about has helped me articulate my thoughts, remind me of tasks I need to do and as I’m discovering now, makes for some great entertainment.
My diary inspirations are of course from the classics: Dork Diaries, Dear Dumb Diary and Barbie Diaries. I also found it very fascinating that Anne Frank had a diary just like me. And just like me she still wrote about ‘girly stuff’ like bras and boys even when there was an important world event like a war or a pandemic going around.
There have been many times in my life when I should’ve just stopped keeping a diary. The time when my brother read my hot or not list of every single boy we knew should’ve been the end. But I learnt nothing from that except to not hide my Tracy Yap spiral bound inside the couch and to not write hot or not lists (they’re actually so demoralising). That journal was the only one that ever had its contents ripped out and flushed down the toilet.
I believe it was Christmas when my mum presented my best friend, Amy* and I matching diaries. The cover was so pretty and purple and it was called ‘My Top Secret Notebook’. It came with a silver lock (that I either lost, got too lazy to keep undoing or probably because the book got too chunky to close) and the cutest stickers that I could use to cover up any names of crushes. But the best thing about it was that there were two girls on the cover, one blonde and one brunette. I guess I ignored the fact that my Asian hair was a lot darker than a light brown because in my head they resembled the blonde and brunette duo that was Amy and me. We would’ve been in kindy going into year one and maybe this was less of a ploy by my mother to ruin my life and really to improve my undeveloped literacy abilities.
Later entries were obviously more developed and at times they became mixed-media works of art with post-it notes I found on the ground, cut-outs of magazines and one time I even stabbed a NASA badge into one of the pages. This continued into high school, however, as I became introduced to the internet my diaries served more practical purposes. In year seven, they were filled with love calculators and Wattpad story ideas, In year nine, I became addicted to bullet journalling and also kept a ‘Jesus Journal’ for sermons, prayers and to write down every moment that I cried that year. I would say year ten and now, year eleven, I have become more productive, honest and ‘less cringe’. However, it would be helpful to note that in year six and eight I didn’t actively keep a journal and those just happen to be remembered as the best years of my life. My psychologist and mum were right, being able to look back on all those entries make me glad I wrote down all the best and worst things in my life (or other people’s lives).
Try it out yourself and see what you like and how it can help you. Write down lists, stories, doodles, crazy dreams, birthdays, whatever you need on paper. My fellow diary-keeping friends all do it in different ways: Bella’s* journal is made up of scary drawings, scrapbooking and is all around messy. Charlotte uses it to keep flowers for pressing and together we write down Jane Austen monologues and sad poems to read out to our gentlemen callers. Her English teacher saw her writing down Captain Wentworth’s letter from Persuasion during class and laughed at her but she has no regrets. Claire uses a bullet journal with themes for every month, a calendar and all her to-dos written down. As you can see, not everyone’s experience has been as turbulent and embarrassing as my own.
Now I’ll leave you with a highly regrettable poem I wrote sometime in February four years ago, in year seven. I also have an unpublished Episode: Choose Your Own Story that I wrote with the same theme as this poem. So I’m guessing this poem meant a lot more to me at some point in my life. Feel free to cringe with me now. If you’re any of my teachers, (especially my English ones), don’t waste your time, I’m sure you have marking to get back to.
Picking Heads Over Heels
The pictures on my phone,
every pixel of you is beautiful,
the nervousness that you make,
just takes the cake,
every day, every minute,
every lie, every love,
we shared it was worth it.
No matter the heartbreak,
no matter the pain,
I still miss you, do you miss me?
I'm falling head over heels
picking my head over all the heels you would buy me,
I want to get out of this alive.
But you live
*All names in this article have been changed to prevent any further awkwardness for me or those mentioned.