words from ten years ago

This morning, I've been looking through my high school journals. Because before there was blogging, there was journaling... And the thing about journals is that they are so much more CANDID. The words were only meant for me, and as a result my diaries are absolutely dripping with teenage angst and melodrama!

I had originally thought that transcribing a journal entry would make for a fun blog post, but as I leafed through the entries, I realized that most of it is just simply too CRINGE-WORTHY to repeat here. Case in point: I wrote twenty-two pages (front and back!) of a phone call conversation I had with a boy I liked in the tenth grade. Yes! I actually taped the phone conversation and transcribed it into my diary. To relive forever!!

I especially enjoyed reading what I had to say after I had graduated from my international high school in Germany:

"I will have no problem falling for college guys (if there are any worth falling for...)"

and

"I'm definitely NOT going to marry before the age of 25"

Little did I know that I would be celebrating my FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY when I was 25!!

And here's one more little clip that I look back on with a smile (written just before I moved to the States for college):
"I'm terrified of starting over from scratch, of leaving Europe, of leaving home, of closing the doors of my high school world, of saying goodbye to all that is dear to me.... My biggest fear in life, my absolute biggest fear, is that I will look back on my high school years as the best years of my life. I don't want my life to go downhill from here. I want my high school years to be great ones, but I also want experiences that will be even better!"
I smiled when I read those words because my biggest fear didn't come true! The best years of my life are right now (thank you, Lord!!)

Did you keep a diary when you were younger?

15 comments:

Gigi said...

It's great that it didn't go downhill from high school, isn't it?

I have tons of writings from junior high, high school and college. I sort of cringe when I read them now :)

Clix said...

I know! I cringe when I hear students giving graduation speeches that mention high school as "the best times." I'm like... jeez, how depressing! ;D

I have lots of writing from high school and junior high, but I never really kept a diary for any length of time. I started a couple of times, I guess, but I never kept up with it.

Sherri said...

I had some diaries from high school, but I think I remember shredding them before I left for college! Now I wish I had them. I do have some from when I was 11/12, and they are hysterical!

One thing I do have is a huge bag of notes that I had written to my BFF in high school (she kept them, gave them to me a few years ago). I really don't like reading them, I agree with Gigi!

Theodora Ofosuhima said...

I still have a diary, LOL.

Just like you I used to transcript a whole conversation to relive the experience of the conversation with the guy I like, LOL! I have not change much.

I read my journals and think "Girl, you are just like before with more passion in your actions." I smile when I re-read my diaries, past is part of who I am and I will never trade them.

Great post, thanks for sharing :)!

Kenzie said...

The only diary I ever kept was when we were in elementary school! My sisters and I laugh every time we read them becasue 90% of the journal is filled with our fights!

Anonymous said...

I have almost 30 journal notebooks, starting from age 12 till now (40). I think after 10 years, they lose cringe quality and are just really funny and interesting. A few years ago, to promote journal writing, I lugged 20+ journals into class as "evidence" of how age 12 is an excellent time to start recording ideas/feelings/experiences. I read aloud one entry (age 12) full "mean girl" judgmental thoughts about my friends, even though I never thought of myself as "mean" and had many friends! It was VERY enlightening!

Anonymous said...

I've noticed you mentioned several times recently you went to HS in Germany. Were you a military brat? My dad was in the Army and I went to 10-12 at Zweibrucken American HS on the Air Force base there. Where did you go to HS? Always great to meet someone else who went to school over there. I loved my HS experience in Germany and wouldn't trade it for anything.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed you mentioned several times recently you went to HS in Germany. Were you a military brat? My dad was in the Army and I went to 10-12 at Zweibrucken American HS on the Air Force base there. Where did you go to HS? Always great to meet someone else who went to school over there. I loved my HS experience in Germany and wouldn't trade it for anything.

tgm said...

I started my first diary when I was eight or nine. I journaled through most of middle school, high school and college. I still have a journal, I just don't write in as much as I used to. My earliest entries focus on really mundane things, like my score on the multiplication tables quiz and what I hoped my mom was making for dinner that night. I've kept them all though because they are part of me, of who I was and who I've become.

Unknown said...

Oh my that is adorable!! I wish I had kept a diary back then...I can just imagine what it would have said! Oh my!

Bethany said...

Oh, those are precious! My diaries from my teenage years are horrifying.

Life is good, no?

Mama Pike said...

Hmmm...I too cringe when I read old diaries...there seems to be a theme going on here. But it is fun just the same.

An interesting thing to do is to read what people wrote in your yearbooks, if you still have them. I graduated in 1974 and a year or so ago I got out my senior yearbook and went down memory lane. Lots of people I remembered but I drew a blank on several names.

Sharlene T. said...

Your final quote would be just as apropos today for the next decade in your life... my best childhood friend journaled her entire life, including mementos, flowers, etc., in a series of 3-ring binders from her early childhood through her death as a woman of 56! What a legacy she left her daughters... I journaled for the first three years of my marriage, until I found my husband reading one -- he would get up early to read it, every morning, before going to work... I was crushed and felt invaded and hurt that he would think he had the right to own my very own thoughts and feelings because we were married, while he never did the same... it wasn't world-shattering, but it was my reaction to my world and mine alone... I stopped keeping a journal and burned them... blogging isn't a journal so much as, to me, it's either sharing a niche world or critiquing the world, but from people who really enjoy writing and have a need to do so... that's why I think others don't understand blogging, because they're not writers, at heart... but, that's just my thinking... y'all come visit when you can..


Twitter: SolarChief

malia said...

Cringe-worthy is how I'd characterize by teenage diaries... and so cliched-- "My Mother just doesn't understand me" ect.

But how wonderful that you have your journals to go through and look back on things and now you can see how everything turned out!

alicia said...

Yep. Lots of it. I've been trying to convince my kids that I'm journaling now when I'm blogging. But you are right- journals are really much more personal and most stuff I wouldn't share either.

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