Hiding in Plain Sight

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Not-So-Secret Act of Keeping a Diary

 

Many of us have kept or do keep a diary (even if we insist that it’s not a diary). As a kid, your diary is usually filled with accounts of everyday activities and the ups and downs of your romantic exploits. As an adult, there are many more life-examining topics to write about, but you still have a healthy dose of those romantic exploits, too.

What’s the purpose in journaling? It allows us to organize our thoughts. It gives us something to dig up and reminisce about in the future. Above all this, journaling is all about self-expression.

I believe even the most shy writer, keeping his or her diary under lock and key, secretly wants that diary to be read by someone else. After all, can you really express yourself without an audience?

I myself have kept many journals. My first was given to me by my mother when I was in elementary school. It was an obnoxious pink leopard-print thing with a matching pen and a couple sheets of even more obnoxious stickers. Being somewhat of a tomboy, I hated the design, but I still cherished the present.

What made it special was that my mom had written a little love note to me on the first page, and I could write whatever I wanted, because there was a lock and key. I mainly filled the rest of the pages with a never-ending stream of run-on sentences devoted to the love of my life, which was either a boy in my class or my puppy, depending on my mood. The day came where I caught my mom reading my diary. I cried and yelled at her, and she yelled right back. Apparently, in the sea of love letters for my puppy, there was a page or two where I complained about my mom. In that moment, neither one of us were acting mature. We were no longer fighting as mother and daughter, but as two kids. My mom and I have thought back on this day, and she agrees with that statement. The fatal blow came when she blindly ripped some pages out of my diary in a fit of anger. One of those pages just happened to be the first page with her love note written on it, and I took the symbolic meaning very literally.

This was a major event in my childhood. It took a while for my mom to regain my trust, but I eventually forgave her. I don’t know if one is ever able to truly forgive and forget though. That moment was a turning point in our relationship. That was the day I started thinking of my mom as a friend rather than a superior. I still respected her and took orders from her, but when it came to personal issues between us, I saw myself as on equal, if not higher footing, because I knew she made mistakes too.

I currently have a prayer journal. I’ve been writing in it for over a year now. I like to look back at things I’ve prayed for and see how God has acted in my life, but, as I stated earlier, that’s not the main reason to write. Being prayers, my intended audience is God. But He doesn’t really count, because he knows my thoughts anyways. I’ve shared one of my prayers from that journal here on my blog, and I intend to share more, but as honest as I try to be, there are some that are just too personal to share with everybody. Who did I write those really personal ones for then? I haven’t shared those pages with any other human, and though I leave my journal in plain sight, I highly doubt anyone I know has read through it. Prayer is still a delicate and sacred thing in many people’s eyes, even if they aren’t religious themselves.

When I write to God, I harbor a silent little intention of making my thoughts known to my future husband, and probably my future children, too, when they’re old enough to appreciate it.

To take an example from Inception, one of my favorite movies, as soon as a secure place (like a vault) is created, a person can’t help but subconsciously fill that “safe” place with their secrets. Private thoughts, once written down, are never truly private. Who are you writing for?