Week 3: Trust Issues

Not for one second do I believe that someone wouldn’t read my journals after my death whether I asked them to or not. Call it paranoia. Call it overdramatic. Call it trust issues. But among all the banes of human existence, curiosity is certainly one of the strongest.

 

When I journal, I free write. I use it as an experiment, not really paying attention to craft, style, or grammar. That writing isn’t something I’m proud of, and I would most definitely never publish it. To burn 40 years’ worth of journals though, like Dominique Browning admitted to in her article for The New York Times, would make me hesitate.

I don’t doubt that anyone who stumbles upon them would read my diaries in a heartbeat, especially if I wasn’t around to catch them at it. However, I’m not sure this actually bothers me that much. As Miles Kington states in his article for Independent, “you shouldn’t be keeping a diary” if you want to keep its contents private. There’s certainly something to be said about privacy as a virtue, and I do consider myself someone who keeps their cards close to their chest, but honestly, once I’m gone, who cares? My biggest concern with someone else reading my journals is potential embarrassment. I can’t blush if I’m six feet under.

So, while I’m not proud of what I write in my diaries, I wouldn’t go so far as burning all of them from the last 40 years of my life (regardless of the fact that I’m still well below that age). Like I said, I don’t think it would matter to me all that much if people were to read them after I’m gone, but I also don’t think I would have the heart to destroy all of those emotions. Or at least the physical representation of them.

You see, writing in a journal is like therapy for me. I write out everything that’s going through my mind— what’s bothering me, what I’m stressed about, why I’m angry at my friend, how I’m worried about my sick cat— and afterwards, I feel better. I feel like I’ve gotten something off my chest, and sometimes, journaling even helps me understand something about myself that I didn’t before I wrote it all down.

Having visited a therapist at least twice a month every month in the last three years, I can tell you from experience that therapy is hard work. Talking about things you’ve buried for as long as you can remember is hard work. Changing yourself is hard work. Journaling, for me, is part of that hard work. Although it’s not something my therapist literally “assigns” me, it’s a lot like homework. It helps me apply the techniques I learned in therapy and continue working on myself outside of my bimonthly sessions. Through this, I’ve pushed myself further than I ever thought I could go, and I don’t want to just throw that all away. Even if I never read them again, my journals still represent something valuable to me, namely a journey towards self-discovery.

As for reading others’ journals, I would like to think I would never violate someone’s privacy like that, but unfortunately, I’m also human and therefore innately curious. Especially if it was someone I was close with and/or felt was keeping secrets from me, I might just take a peak. But Jenny Alexander brings up a good point in her blog post about reading others’ diaries (or rather, not reading others’ diaries):

"If you read someone's journal... you will not find the person there, and thinking that you will could give you every which kind of wrong impression."

Someone's words do not define that person. Their thoughts, feelings, struggles, concerns, etc. do not define them. Thinking otherwise will lead you into dangerous territory. A writer does not leave themselves behind on the pages of their journal— these are merely impressions of the writer. Just like looking at a fingerprint can never tell you all that much about someone, their journals probably can't either.

Perhaps it's best to leave them be.