diary |ˈdīərē|
noun ( pl. -ries)
a book in which one keeps a daily record of events and experiences
journal |ˈjərnl|
noun
a daily record of news and events of a personal nature; a diary.
blog |bläg|
noun
a Web site on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative
When I was younger I kept a diary. Well not really I TRIED to keep a diary. I very much wanted to keep a diary and would start a new one ever so often. I would write in it religiously for days or even weeks then I would stop. Months later I would pick it up again and start the process over again. I wasn’t a committed diarist but I enjoyed the outlet. Then when I was a teenager, my mother read my diary. Now before you go all ‘get over it, loser’ on me. I completely understand where she was coming from, really I do. My mom is 41 years older than me and from a completely different time. She grew up and there were no fridges, I grew up smokin’ dope in the eastview bushes. I get that she was behind the eight-ball with me. I would have done the same thing in her situation. I mean I basically do the same thing everytime I check the kids computer history, right? It’s an invasion of perceived privacy which a child, preteen or teenager just doesn’t understand. What I will never understand is that she then used the information that she read about against me. I’m still pissed to this day about that. I’ll never understand that part of it. So you go into my private stuff (or what my little 14 year head thought was private) read it and then use that information against me. By the way, do not ever bring up this incident with my mother. She gets super pissed if you talk about it at all. To her she can’t understand what she did wrong in the least because in her mind, children do not have the right to privacy. I lived in her house and therefore she had every right to do whatever she wanted. So 26 years later she still thinks that fact that she ‘found something’ in the diary is justification that she read it. And I still think that if she would have shut her damn mouth she would have found out some WAY juicier stuff just a short year later. See what she failed to realize is that she had a direct line into what I was thinking and what I was doing. She should have read the diary, put it back and then found another way to find out the same information. Hence keeping her ’source’ open for more info later. After she read the diary I never wrote in it again.
As an adult I had a journal. I was no longer some ‘child’ who wrote in a diary with a flimsy metal key hanging from it. I had a beautifully bound book from Chapters to drop my pearls of wisdom into. No longer would there be rating systems on which boy I was madly in love with for the week. Now there would be thought provoking prose on the ability of some twat to phone me back after a night at Goose Loonies dance club. I started many journals but never got back to the free style writing of my youth. I lived in my own home but never was I able to let go and just vent as I had when I was younger. It no longer felt like a ’safe’ medium but I still journalled. I tried very hard to pick it back up. Oprah said journalling was important then dammit I was going to journal. Really it was just another way for me to beat myself up about not being good at something. That was a pretty prevalent thought process during my teens and twenties, so the lack of journal writing wasn’t anomalous it just reaffirmed it on a more daily basis. Kind of like a nice little piece of judgment all leather bond and floral covered sitting on my nightstand. Then it happened again. My privacy was blown out of the water and I lost my ability journal for years.
Then I started this blog. There is no perceived privacy when you write your thoughts down for the world (or 75-ish people day depending on traffic and if I’ve used any buzz words that bring in the searches). In the beginning I never really thought about it, I just wrote what was on my mind, but almost mindlessly. There was a lot of knitting talk and stuff about the kids. Then I found Bikram and the talk moved to yoga and moving overseas. But every so often something would be gnawing at me and I’d want to post it and I would. It never dawned on me to be worried about who was reading it or what they might think of me. I really do write this blog for me and the reality is that the longer I write it the more of ‘me’ that I put in it. It’s almost as if the writing of the blog in a public forum let me get back to how I used to write in my diary when I was fourteen. And now I NEED that diary back. I really need that place where I put down all my thoughts and feelings because I am so far away from everything and everyone I know. There is no safety net here. When you fight with your spouse there is no Bikram to go to so you can “leave it on the mat”. My stress coping skills are pretty simple. Bikram (none here), smoking (shut up), whining (8 hour time difference) knitting (thank god) and this blog. I had no idea how much I had come to rely on those other coping skills until they were all gone except the knitting and this blog. My spouse is NOT a talker. I am a talker. He has little or no interest in the things I want to talk about. He is not good at hiding that fact. If I start talking about subjects he has no interest in he will just interrupt and talk about something else. Really. I wish I was joking. And I’m not saying I’m talking about how to knit the perfect gusset, I could be talking about the train schedule. If he isn’t interested he doesn’t hear me. Period. He has many good qualities listening isn’t one of them. Either is talking. This blog is where I get to talk, I can talk about what I want to talk about and whether it is perception or reality I think that because it’s in a public way I feel heard at the same time. Wow. Big thoughts for someone who just wanted to write a post and work out some stuff in her head….better go fill up the coffee…
